Lessons Learned: First Hollow Earth Expedition Session
On Saturday, our group played our first Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) game. I ran the adventure in the back of the book and the players could either make their own character or use the pre-gens from the book. All of them decided to create their own characters. In the end, everyone had a good time and greatly enjoyed the game mechanics and setting. From the session, I took away some thoughts about playing HEX.
1. Characters in HEX can be hard to make, but not for the reasons you think.
We started off the session making characters. The mechanics of character creation in HEX is pretty simple. But even though the players, who had never played HEX before, found it easy to come up with a character’s mechanics, it took two hours for everyone to be ready to play. Why? Hard to find options? Asking a lot of questions on how to do things? No. The hardest part was actually coming up with a concept.
HEX is a pulp game. But what is “pulp?” What defines the genre? These are the questions my group faced. There are many examples floating on the Net of what forms of entertainment define pulp. From books like Tarzan or Journey to the Center of the Earth to movies like Jurassic Park or Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. I think the best thing to do before starting a HEX game would be to find good examples of pulp and send them to the group. Also, I would recommend sitting down and watching a couple of movies that help define the genre and discussing why it’s full of pulp.
For example, Jurassic Park. What makes it a pulp film? First, it has dinosaurs. Second, it has people fighting for their lives. Third, it has over-the-top scenes of danger, death, and survival. And, finally, it has dinosaurs.
2. The players don’t want to wait while the NPCs fight each other.
In the final battle, the group of four PCs, along with an NPC and six ape-men, fought a group of 13 Nazis, which included the BBEG. In the first round, I made the mistake of rolling for every Nazi and every ape-man as they fought each other. In the subsequent rounds, I ditched that and just described what was happening and removed a few Nazis and ape-men from the board as they died. It made the combat go faster and it focused more of the spotlight on the PCs and the BBEG. It also added a bit of cinematic flair to the encounter as the “camera” was focused on the PCs but you could definitely see a lot of action in the background.
3. Over-the-top is where it’s at.
Style points play a big part in HEX. Technically, they only allow you do things such as boost a Talent or take an extra action during combat. However, a friend of mine, Tom, ran a HEX one-shot where the PCs could use style points to do things they normally couldn’t do. I put this into place in my game as well.
Unfortunately, my players didn’t really get into the swing of this as much as I wish. They took advantage of it a bit but nothing really stood out to me as “over-the-top.” For example, one player was 30 feet away from the BBEG. His gas gun had a 25-foot range. I told him that rather than taking the penalty for firing beyond range, he could spend a style point to do something cool. He spent one and then proceeded to jump off the building and fire in mid-air. Granted, it was really cool, but I’ve seen it before. What I was picturing in my mind was the PC firing the gas gun not at the enemy, but rather at the rooftop of the building next to him. The camera would follow as the canister rolled down the roof, into the gutter, rolled a bit more, rolled down a drainpipe, and then landed at the BBEG’s feet, exploding gas onto him. But that’s just me. 
Anyway, I think my players could definitely get into the swing of “over-the-top” if we played a long-term campaign with HEX.
4. Story trumps combat any day.
The adventure in the back of the HEX book is a great introduction to the setting. It only has one combat written into it but it still gives a great feel of what HEX is all about. A lot of perception rolls were made to notice strange phenomena occurring as they traveled to the North Pole. Hiding from the T-Rex was really cool. The scientist in the party decided to get a little too close to the natural flora, so I threw in a carnivorous plant which was taken out handily by the ex-Marine in the party (One shot. One kill). The point is, the story was so great and the players were so into the setting that they didn’t care that they really didn’t get to fight anything. They were enthralled with the fact that stuff was going haywire in the ship and that the person they found alive in the Hollow Earth thought he had been there for a little over a year when, in fact, it had been eight years.
And, really, this is true of any setting. You can throw combat after combat at the party but, unless it has a compelling story, the players are going to get bored.
5. Rolling lots of dice is great.
Since HEX isn’t d20, you end up rolling a lot more dice. For example, the BBEG’s defense roll was made using 10d6′s. The number of evens on the dice was the number of successes gained. I’ve always loved being able to roll a lot of dice in D&D when doing damage so it was a a blast to roll so many dice every time the players shot at the BBEG.
6. Trying different genres of RPG is a lot of fun.
I’m lucky to be in a group willing to give different RPGs a shot. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s always fun and it’s always a learning experience. In this case, it was a lot of fun and everyone had a good time playing.
Conclusion
HEX is simple and fun to play. I can definitely see making a long-term campaign based upon it. Right now, we’re playing different RPGs because we’re not getting together as much because of the holidays and because we stopped playing 4E. But I definitely think HEX would be something we come back to in the future. 
reveal December 9th, 2008 at 10:26 AM
@Tom – Thanks.