Welcome to my Hollow Earth Expedition (hereafter referred to as HEX ) set of pages. One of the first things that I should mention from the word "Go" here is that HEX is not a roleplaying game that is oriented towards fantasy or the modern day, but is instead geared towards the 1930's and deals with Pulp action as was prevalent in that period of history. Furthermore, HEX is a roleplaying game that does not deal in explicit sexuality and the like, as it was the period for "good girl art" where attractive women were portayed in dangerous situations (a lot of the covers of the Pulp magazines qualify in this regard). HEX is a Pulp adventure roleplaying game that has nothing unique to its basic set of mechanics, but does have a couple of unique twists to it. While the HEX pages that you see here are relatively skimpy for the moment, that will change as I add material to these pages, as new products come out for the game, and as various roleplaying gamers start to discover this truly unique roleplaying game with such an interesting setting and background. If nothing else, it can certainly be said that HEX is one of the more inventive settings, and a truly invigorating rpg, to have come along in quite a while, and doesn't seem to owe all that much to previous rpgs that dealt with Pulp-style settings.
But let's start at the beginnng...
While I don't remember some of the earliest Pulp adventure stories that I read, I know that I was very fond of the genre in my teenage years. I started off with what were called the "hero Pulps", the pulp magazines that featured illustrated novel-length stories of heroic characters such as The Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Phantom Detective. The latter was one of my favourite characters from the old magazines that my dad had, and I read them when I was thirteen or so. To be honest, it was this character and his stories that sparked my love of the mystery genre, well...that and Sherlock Holmes, but that's another story altogether. I remember reading some of the old issues of Amazing Stories , one of the best series of the Pulp magazines, and was also fond of the old issues of Thrilling Wonder Stories and Planet Stories . The saddest thing for me as I grew older was that, despite the fact that I still loved the old Pulps, and collected for myself some of the new (at the time) magazines that featured Pulp fiction, it didn't have that "je ne sais quoi" quality of the old magazines. And of course, once I started roleplaying in 1974/5, there were no Pulp rpgs out there. Several rpgs over the years featured Pulp elements, such as the GURPS Pulp Hero and the TORG: The Possibility Wars The Land Below and The Nile Empire books, but there weren't any real rpgs that focused on the genre. Sure, there was Lands of Mystery (a supplement for Justice, Inc.), Inner-Earth (a 36-page PDF from Hero Games detailing a version of the hollow earth), stuff for the Indiana Jones RPG, the GURPS Cliffhangers book, the Hollow World supplements for 1st Edition D&D 's world of Mystera, and several others, but there is no real game out there for the genre.
Or at least, not one that appealed to me with a ruleset that I liked. The closest system that I came across that worked for me was the Unisystem from Eden Studios, notably their Terra Primate game book, and I used that for a while to do a Lost World-style game that fell apart for various reasons.
And then, late in July of 2006, I heard about a new roleplaying game written by Jeff Combos (whose name I didn't recognise) and to be published by Exile Game Studio, a relatively new publishing enterprise. The name of the game was to be Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) . I heard good things about the game after the company ran some sessions of it at GenCon in August, and after checking out the Exile Game Studio website, well... I had found a game that looked like it had potential. What appealed to me about HEX was that while the game appeared to be a Pulp adventure roleplaying game, it was focused on the Hollow Earth, another of the subjects that I had been fascinated by and about for two or three decades, at least. This increased my interest in the game, and when I read the first of the reviews that appeared on the internet in August, and went to the HEX forums on the Exile Game Studio website, I knew that I had found the Pulp adventure game that I had been looking for. I ordered a copy of Hollow Earth Expedition as soon as I was able, and when it arrived, I was certain that I had found the Pulp adventure game for me. It had everything that I wanted in a neat little 220+ page book, and had a rather remarkable kind of feel to it once I started to glance through the pages of the rulesbook.
I run two specific game systems, The Dying Earth RPG and a|state (with sets of webpages for both games on my site), from which I get my science fantasy and relatively gothic science fiction with a touch of the modern day fix in roleplaying, but I figured that there was room for another game in my repertoire, especially one that has the potential that HEX has. Besides, one can always make room for new games in one's stable of preferred rpgs, right? <g>
However, it hasn't been as easy as that. While I have run a|state for some time now, and my two gaming groups have a preference for playing The Dying Earth these days, I haven't looked back on this once. Most of the players in my campaigns (I run two of them) have been very enthusiastic about the game, and have mentioned some of what they perceive as the strengths of the game to me as being the deciding factor about whether they wanted to play this game after the first session. I haven't looked back since I started running this game, to be honest, and while it may not be suitable for all players and it may not have the kind of feel that many players who come from other urban roleplaying games would like, this game has everything that *I* wanted in it in regards to the post-modern gothic science fiction rpg.
HEX has a lot of different aspects to it, elements that make for an intriguing roleplaying game and one heck of an experience in that regard. You can actually go to an Overview of the HEX game system to see what the game is all about. If that isn't enough for you, there's a review of the game that you can check out. This review was written by me early on after receiving the game, but I had an intrinsic grasp of the system, so bear in mind that my perspective on the game system may be somewhat slanted in that regard. You will find some other reviews of various HEX supplements as they are published on these web pages in future, and as more come out; it really depends on whether I feel up to the task, or whether I can convince a couple of friends of mine to write reviews in future. <g> What you will find on these web pages devoted to the game is a lot of HEX material, and I hope that some of the material here pleases you and enhances your own own experience of and enjoyment with the Hollow Earth Expedition rpg...
Welcome to the Hollow Earth...watch out for the dinosaurs, hostile natives, dinosaurs, ancient civilizations, dinosaurs, Nazis and, oh, did I mention dinosaurs...