Review of Secrets of the Surface World

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Introduction

The name’s Davenport. I review games.
So the other day Jeff Combos, the head honcho at Exile Game Studio, stops by.
On the one hand, he doesn’t bust through the floor with a drilling machine this time.
On the other, he shows up wearin’ this gizmo on his head lookin’ like a football helmet designed by Buck Rogers.
“Uh… hiya, Jeff,” I says.
“I knew you were going to say that!” he yells. “Success!!”
“Success?”
“Yes!!” he says. “I’ve been testing out the shiny new weird science rules for Hollow Earth Expedition, and this is my latest creation: the Reviewer Previewer! Bwahahahaha!! (Oh… and I knew you were going to say ‘Success?’, too, for the record.)”
“Yeah, that’s great and all,” I says, “but why all the work on nutty science and mind readin’? I thought Hollow Earth Expedition was all about feedin’ Nazis to dinosaurs in the center of the earth.”
That’s when he tells me about Secrets of the Surface World. Turns out all the weirdness in HEX isn’t just below the surface. Why, he says there’re psychics, sorcerers, mad scientists, and all sorts of mysteries topside, too.
Well, you know me: I’m all about the pulp. So, I agreed to give the book a review. (Which, naturally, he knew I was going to do.)
“Oh, by the way,” Jeff says, snickering, “the last word in your review will be ‘core’.”
“Look, showoff,” I says, “Why don’t you just write the review if you already know what I’m going to write?”
“Because I know you’re going to write it, so why bother?”
Well, he had me there. See? Here comes that review now.

Substance

Introduction

After a brief discussion of the book’s contents, the section presents a bit of introductory fiction in the form of a desperate plea for help from a professor in terrible danger – the same professor, as it happens, featured in the sample adventure at the back of the book. I like the fact that the intro fiction is also a prop for the players, although it will give away some pretty big secrets to any players who read it prematurely.

Chapter 1: Characters

Archetypes and Motivations
The chapter begins with new Archetypes (Everyman, Lawman, Monk, Spy) and Motivations (Honor, Hope, Justice, Mystery, Redemption) particularly suitable for surface world adventure. Of course, given the various unintentional means of entering the Hollow Earth, there’s no reason they can’t be used for Hollow Earth adventures as well.

Skills
For the system-minded, the real action begins in the Skills section. Here, the game introduces the concept of the zero level Skill – a Skill with which any member of a given culture will be familiar enough to use unskilled at the base Attribute rating without the standard -2 penalty. Given the fact that this is a pulp game with ability levels closer to the human average, I was glad to see characters get this break.
The game now separates Brawl from the new Martial Arts Skill, although I was a little disappointed to see that both use Strength as the base Attribute. I figured Martial Arts would use Dexterity. Functionally, the main difference between the two is that Martial Arts requires the selection of a fighting style – boxing, judo, karate, etc. – which gives 1-die bonuses or penalties to blocks, grapples, kicks, punches, and throws. Other the other new skills are Focus, which is handy for psychics, magicians, and those who want to resist torture, and Warfare, for giving your side the edge on the battlefield. I’m not sure exactly how the latter is supposed to work in practice, but it is supposed to affect everything from large-scale engagements down to small unit tactics – a good thing, since Ubiquity doesn’t yet offer rules for large-scale engagements.

Talents
The chapter truly shines with the addition of 30 new Talents.
Many of these take the form of special unarmed combat techniques, such as Counterstrike, Breaking Blow, Missile Deflection, and Unarmed Parry. All such talents have a prerequisite skill level of Brawl or Martial Arts – a missed opportunity to better distinguish between the two, in my opinion. Other Talents relate to vehicle maneuvers that probably won’t see a lot of action in the Hollow Earth. Of these, I’m particularly fond of Reckless Driver, which gives a bonus to Drive or Pilot rolls at the expense of damage to the vehicle. Jack of All Trades offers a particularly pulpy ability to ignore untrained Skill penalties and even make untrained rolls for Skills that normally don’t allow them, and Tinker ensures that your pulpy handyman will always have the right tools on hand.
This section also includes the special Talents required to access the paranormal abilities of psychic powers, magic, and weird science – more on those in just a bit. But the paranormal Talents that really caught my eye were those related to the Atlanteans. For starters, characters may now have Atlantean Blood, allowing them to live for centuries. Nice, but not that applicable in play, right? Well, taken a second time, the Talent gives a +1 bonus to all dice rolls, going up to +2 if taken a third time. (Granted, the latter isn’t possible using standard character creation.) That’s getting into superhuman territory, which may be perfect if you’re trying to simulate a borderline superhuman like Doc Savage.
What’s more, whether with Atlantean Blood or not, characters can now pick up the Atlantean Language Talent, allowing them to speak to all sentient creatures as if using their native tongue. GMs beware: this will also let the characters decipher all that mysterious Atlantean writing you’ll no doubt want to spread all over your Hollow Earth ruins. Moreover, Atlantean Language gives access to the Atlantean Power Words Talent, which allows the speaker to issue a one-word mind-controlling command to everyone within ten feet. A well-timed “Sleep!” command could thus drastically change the course of a conflict.
Of course, the very existence of all these Atlantean-based Talents risks giving away one of the setting’s big secrets to browsing players.

Playtest: I used the Atlantean Blood and Atlantean Power Words Talents to help one of my players create a Shadow-esque pulp heroine with low-end superhuman abilities levels and the power to control minds with a word: the Whisper!

Resources
The chapter reprints the Resources presented in the core rulebook, but with some important changes. First, characters can now purchase Resources at level 0, optionally starting with a free level 0 Resource to reflect the greater abundance of resources on the surface. More importantly, Resources are now more interconnected – every two levels of Resources such as Contacts and Fame provide temporary access to Resources such as Artifact or Wealth.

Flaws
The chapter introduces many new Flaws as well. It also introduces the concept of the Severe Flaw: a Flaw so crippling that the character earns two Style Points when it comes into play.

Sample Characters
The chapter concludes with eight new sample surface world characters, many designed to showcase the new abilities found in this sourcebook.

Daredevil Pilot (with jet pack!)

Hermetic Magician

Motion Picture Director

Paranormal Investigator (with amnesia ray!)

Promethan Scientist

Psychic Detective

Scion of Atlantis

Wandering Hero (martial artist)

Playtest: My first exposure to the character creation options in this book was the author’s “League of Extraordinary Pulp” GenCon game, featuring Doc Savage, the Shadow, the Phantom, Indiana Jones, Mandrake the Magician, and the Rocketeer. This really put the new rules to the test, as I’ll detail shortly.

Chapter 2: Supernatural Powers

The core rulebook hinted at the existence of the supernatural in the world of Hollow Earth Expedition. This chapter brings them to light.

Psychic Abilities
The book offers four psychic abilities, each paired with a more advanced ability for which it is the prerequisite: Telepathy (and Mind Control), Telekinesis (and Telekinetic Shield), ESP (and Precognition), and Cloaking (and Enshroud). Characters gain one ability with the purchase of the Psychic Ability Talent and can gain different or more powerful abilities by purchasing the Talent additional times. The powers all function based on rolls of Willpower x 2, so improved ability will be costly; however, characters can exert themselves, gaining +2 on rolls for every one nonlethal wound they take.
Overall, I’d rate these abilities as useful but low-key, about right for a pulp game. As an example, hurling a person (100-250 lbs.) about with Telekinesis would invoke a -10 penalty.

Playtest: Cloaking did a great job of simulating the Shadow’s power in the author’s “League of Extraordinary Pulp” GenCon game.

Magic
Unlike Psychic Powers, Magic is skill-based. After purchasing the Magical Aptitude Talent, would-be magicians must purchase the Charisma-based Sorcery Skill. Each magical tradition is its own skill, and the chapter offers two: Necromancy (dark magic) and Theurgy (light magic).
Magic’s advantage over Psychic Powers lies in its flexibility: magic rituals have ranks, and magicians gain access to one ritual for each level of Sorcery Skill. On the downside, rituals take time to complete – five successes at one minute per roll. Like Psychic Powers, magicians can “push” ritual efforts for +2 to the roll per nonlethal wound; however, magicians can pool their efforts to spread out the wounds among members of the group. Furthermore, magicians can resort to blood sacrifice, gaining +1 per lethal wound inflicted on an animal and +2 per lethal wound inflicted on a human. All of this works great for me: pulpy magic should involve long rituals, cultists, and sacrifices, without the whiz-bang instant gratification of a lightning bolt or a fireball.
Unfortunately, the chapter only gives a taste of magic with five rituals per tradition: Channel Dead, Curse, Drain Life, Raise Dead, and Summon Horror for Necromancy, and Bless, Healing Hands, Mystic Shield, Levitate, and Foretell for Theurgy. And while I was happy to see zombie stats associated with the Raise Dead ritual, the eponymous horror of Summon Horror is left up to the GM to design.

Playtest: The author used Magic to simulate the illusion powers of Mandrake the Magician. That required him to create a new ritual, however. And in any case, I think Mandrake’s illusions should work instantly – more like a Psychic Power.

Chapter 3: Secret Societies

Given the name of the book and the value of hidden knowledge in the setting, it’s only fitting that the book devotes a chapter to secretive organizations. After going into more depth regarding groups introduced in the main rulebook – the Terra Arcanum and the Thule Society – the chapter introduces societies both mundane and exotic. Some, like the Catholic Church’s Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, seek to protect humanity from dangerous secrets. Others, like the weird scientists of the Order of Prometheus, the mages of the Hermetic Order of the Rose Cross, and the psychic researchers of the Foundation for Research and Enlightenment, aim to push the boundaries of human knowledge. Groups also include organizations on both sides of the law, such as the Mafia and the FBI. (And the latter includes the Special Investigations Unit, a sort of pulp-era Men in Black.) Finally, groups such as the Explorers Club and U.S. Army Intelligence stand ready to send heroes on their way to the Hollow Earth, albeit for very different reasons. As if all this information weren’t enough, the chapter provides stats for both generic individuals like Mafia thugs and G-men and notable personalities such as Richard Byrd, Aleister Crowley, and Edgar Cayce.

Chapter 4: The Surface World

A gazetteer of exotic locales around the globe, this chapter is a treasure trove of adventure ideas large and small, from a Lovecraftian frozen city in Antarctica to a remarkable curio shop tucked away in Shanghai. Included are the prehistoric Lost World, El Dorado, Shangri-La, and the Bermuda Triangle, but the chapter doesn’t neglect mysteries in the heart of civilization as well. What is the purpose of the mystic symbols etched into the Empire State Building, for example, and why have sheets of Egyptian hieroglyphics newly acquired by the British Museum attracted the attention of the Hermetic Order of the Rose Cross?
If there’s any problem at all with this chapter, it’s that it presents the eponymous Secrets of the Surface World without revealing the truth behind them. This may not be a problem for most GMs, but I suspect that more than a few of said secrets – the Yeti, for example – may have their source in the Hollow Earth, and I hate it when future supplements diverge from an ongoing game due to lack of information.
On the other hand, I appreciate the fact that the secrets are secrets, in the sense that the surface world of HEX isn’t overrun with overt weirdness. Plenty of pulp games do that already – and, to my mind, anyway, feel less pulpy for doing so.

Chapter 5: T. F. Arkington’s Lifestyle Emporium

An equipment chapter written in the form of a mail-order catalog, this section greatly expands upon the weapons, vehicles, and general equipment found in the core rulebook.
Alongside obvious weapons like the machete and the Colt .45 are such exotic items as the fakir’s horns, the katar, the hunga munga, and the naginata. As was the case in the core rulebook, the coarseness of the damage scale makes the appeal of some of the costlier items rather questionable, but at least the list is comprehensive. Among my favorites is the Arkington combination gun, a double-barrel 12 gauge shotgun with a .30-06 rifle barrel underneath.
For those after more firepower, the chapter looks at military weaponry from around the world as well, including assorted machine guns, anti-tank weapons, and flamethrowers.
The general equipment section adds more verisimilitude than mechanics, with equipment such as the hurricane pipe, ice goggles, mosquito netting, portable movie screens, and fountain pens. It definitely feels like a period catalog.
I doubt a period catalog would have a vehicles section such as this, however, offering everything from bicycles and canoes to tramp steamers and zeppelins. And that’s not even getting into the military vehicles. Again, the book comes through with an admirable assortment of land, sea, and air vehicles, although readers may be surprised by some historically accurate omissions – the Messerschmitt fighter, for example, which wasn’t introduced until a year after the game’s 1936 default year.

Chapter 6: Weird Science

The book divides the creation of weird science devices into two stages: design and construction. In design, the mad scientist uses a mundane item as a template, applies Enhancements and Limitations to determine the item’s Creation Difficulty and Artifact Level, and makes an appropriate Science roll versus the Creation Difficulty to design the device. In construction, the inventor makes a Craft roll versus the Creation Difficulty to actually build the device, then spends the required number of Experience Points to purchase the device as an Artifact Resource based upon its Artifact Level.
I really like the synergy between Science for conception and Craft for creation and the fact that this system can be used to modify existing weird science devices as well as create new ones. I’m less enthusiastic about the need for a “real-world” template for a device, however, as this rules out inventions for which there is no “real-world” basis – a time machine, for example.
Still, the system allows for the creation of some really cool devices, as the examples prove – among these, a werewolf serum, a telekinesis glove, and a killer Nazi robot.

Playtest: In the “League of Extraordinary Pulp” game, the author used these rules to equip Doc Savage with mercy bullets and knockout gas bombs and to trick out the Rocketeer’s rocket pack. In my game, with some tips from the author, I created a Robin-style telescoping quarterstaff for my player’s pulp heroine that allowed her to attack with her Acrobatics skill and tweaked the werewolf formula to make a Mr. Hyde serum. I was left wondering, however, whether the device modification rules applied to mundane modifications to mundane devices – mounting machineguns on one character’s seaplane, for example.

Chapter 7: Vehicle Combat

The book goes into a surprising amount of detail on vehicle combat, including a full range of maneuvers – strafing, ramming, dive bombing, jumps, and assorted stunts. I particularly like the dogfighting rules, which will have the pilots making a series of maneuvers and counter-maneuvers until one or the other loses and the winner can attack.
The chapter also includes vehicle weaponry, which again illustrate the problem with combining force with accuracy: heavy weapons provide an insane number of attack dice.

Playtest: In practice, I found vehicular combat to be a little overwhelming. Again, this had to do with the front-loading of all modifiers. When characters were shooting at aircraft from the window of an airship, for example, I had to factor in the scale of the vehicle, the speed of the vehicle, the size of the pilot being targeted, the damage rating of the weapon used, the armor rating of the vehicle, the difficulty of firing from a moving vehicle, etc.

Sample Adventure: Prisoner of the Reich

Warning: Adventure spoilers follow. Potential players should skip ahead to “Style” below.
This adventure takes place entirely on the surface. The adopted daughter of a missing professor contacts the PCs to help locate him – a search that will take them via a remarkable airship from the U.S. to Cairo to deep within Nazi Germany. Along the way, they’ll face a Thule Society sorcerer, a Nazi super-zeppelin loaded with jet pack troopers, and a pair of T. rexes courtesy of an Atlantean portal to the Hollow Earth.

Playtest: It’s a fun adventure, and an ideal way to assemble a group that you eventually want to take to the Hollow Earth – which I did. Progress depends too much on a couple of investigatory rolls early on and (to a lesser extent) some specific PC actions – a retreat, an act of blind trust, and a surrender – but none of these proved insurmountable. I did feel the need to invoke GM fiat to keep the players from going through the portal at the end, however, since I’d planned on them going to the Hollow Earth via the adventure in the core rulebook.

Style

Everything I said about the core rulebook holds true for this supplement. The artwork and writing remain top-notch – although I don’t find the cover quite as attractive – and no typos stuck out to me.

Conclusion

About the worst that I can say about this supplement is that its reach exceeds its grasp in certain respects – namely, the limited information on magic and the lack of answers behind the surface world’s secrets. Other than that, any problems I have relate to the game system itself, not this book’s application of that system – to the contrary, I find the new rules to be quite clever.
Honestly? Unless you’re entirely certain that your Hollow Earth Expedition game will never involve the surface world, paranormal powers, and weird science, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It does a wonderful job of fleshing out the world, making the surface every bit as pulpy as the core.

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

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