Editing Hollow Earth Expedition (section)

==The Game==
It's a classless, skill-based point-buy game, using large dice pools, running on a custom engine known as Ubiquity. If you come from the WoD background, you should feel right at home with how things work, are scaled and progress. Stats range from 1 to 5 and skills are 0-5. Corresponding values add up, along with gear and situational modifiers and give you number of dice to roll. Which means you can get quite a bucket, but don't sweat it - it accounts for that and allows to simply pick a fixed outcome of the roll (average of the number of dice used for roll) and just move on, which speeds shit up significantly.

Since the game is designed for pulp in mind, you by default are playing larger than life characters and most of the things on your path are just chaff to go through. This means four things all at once: it's relatively easy to get hurt, but you can't just randomly drop dead on the spot; combat, even against groups, is easy to resolve; despite the previous two things like tactics, flanking, ambushes and what not still affect the combat, so it's not just whacking things around; and you do damage that comes from a combination of skill and/or gear, in fixed values, rather than an additional damage rolls. As a result, the gameplay loop is extremely fast, because you have the only value you need for everything pre-written in your character sheet and might even opt to not roll at all, if you think the number is sufficiently large.

Outside combat, this also allows to be that pulp character, rather than some schmuck, since variety of actions your characters is supposed to be good at are pretty much auto-resolved in trivial situations. And, again, you might outright opt to not roll at all, because why even bother with a regular Piloting roll, when your character is an ace pilot that further specialise in fighter planes? Unless, of course, you really like to roll those 17 dice you've got there.

And this is unfortunately the ugly aspect of the game, at least for newfags. Originally, it came with its own custom dice, of special d8. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking - game runs on custom dice, what a shitshow. Well, you don't have to use it, the game allows to replace it with any other dice of your choice, as long as you have a lot of them or use part of the auto-resolve. The custom dice itself was specifically made for the rules, with different values on their faces, representing the possible outcome: three 1s, three 2s and three 3s. So instead of, say, rolling six dice in a check of 6, you would pick just two 3s and roll those, their possible outcomes corresponding to rolling whatever. The ugly part of this custom dice doesn't come from it existing, but rather that the company making them went down under in mid-10s, so you are shit out of luck without making your own, or just stuck throwing around a bucket of regular d6s. Or going for fixed values to ignore rolls entirely.

The game is heavy on gear, since it contributes third part of the resolution in all the mechanics, after stats and skills. An incompetent character with good gear can still succeed, and competent character equipped with a stick and a shoelace will still manage just fine. You can probably figure out what happens when a professional is also using custom-made equipment. The importance of gear extends well beyond combat situations, too. Your bumbling elderly professor can still climb up a cliff when properly kitted (and aided by someone more agile), because that climbing gear will still count as if he had 3 ranks in Athletics. Items aren't just props, but they come with defined, numerical advantage and rules on how to "stat" various things, even on a fly. This prevents the non-combat situations from devolving into either doing "mother may I" to the GM or relying entirely on players creativity or narrative tricks when they lack related skills, simply substituting the lacks with gear. The result is a game that's idiot-proof and also very fast (and loose) to play - you pretty much ''can't'' make a character that sucks. And even if you deliberately did so, it can be easily fixed with the right gear.

Style Points, the meta-currency of HEX, for the most part avoid the standard issue of meta-bullshit that change the situation or drastically alter the outcome of the situation. What they do is increasing your dice pool - rather than the roll outcome - and help mitigate damage or bolster your allies. Always at 1:1 basis. Their economy is also different than typical meta-currency. First of all, you are expected to non-stop gain and spend them, rather than them being some rare pool worth hoarding - if you didn't earn five or more of them during a single session, either you didn't contribute at all, or your GM is a moron. Plus, they are only ever awarded them for your actions, rather than talking in funny voices or LARPing. In essence, this means you have to stick to what your character would '''*actually*''' do as defined by their archetype, backstory and traits, [[That_guy|rather than insisting on doing what you feel like]]. There are two issues with this entire sub-system: everyone at the table (and especially the GM) must be fully aware how disposable and easy-to-earn those points are, and that they aren't like [[FATE_System|FATE Points]], where you only get them for setting yourself up for bad outcomes first. Otherwise, the whole thing can horribly backfire on the group.