Tabletop Game / Hollow Earth Expedition

Feeding Nazis to Dinosaurs since 2006.

Hollow Earth Expedition is an award-winning tabletop roleplaying game designed to simulate pulp novels and old serials. Think Indiana Jones meets The Rocketeer in Journey to the Center of the Earth. Uses its own dice pool system, Ubiquity, which has been licensed to several other games: Desolation, a post-apocalyptic fantasy, All For One—the Musketeers fight demons, Space 1889, Leagues of Adventure—general Victorian adventures with options for steampunk or supernatural horror, and Quantum Black—modern day corporate monster hunters.

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This tabletop-game provides examples of:

• 90% of Your Brain: The in-game explanation behind Psychic Powers.
• Acquired Poison Immunity: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. Cannibal tribes are known for their skill in creating poisons. Some of them include small doses of poison in their meals to build up an immunity to them.
• Action Girl:
  • Nothing prevents players from making one, and a few of the example characters are those, too. In fact, from all the example characters in the basic book, the female Fortune Hunter is easily the most balanced and competent character.
  • Amazons, obviously. And they form an entire society of those.
• Action Initiative:
  • What Initiative and its rating are for. You roll it once per the entire combat and set the order of actions from lowest to highest values.
  • Alternative rules, Continuous Combat, turn Initiative to a counter for when the next move will happen, rather than just an order, so against particularly slow, ambushed or simply unlucky enemies, it is possible to move twice before they will even have a chance to react.
• All Myths Are True: The general theme of the game. But Mysteries of the Hollow Earth makes it literal, as it makes places like The Shangri-La, El Dorado, Atlantis and few more actual locations (or at least repurposed ruins of them) to visit. Other expansions also make it explicit that a whole bunch of myths throughout the world are true - and the majority of them have zero relation to the Hollow Earth itself (like taoistic cultivation or voodoo take on the afterlife being both true).
• All Swords Are the Same: The game was not designed with fencing in mind. Almost all bladed weapons are interchangeable and short for ancient artifacts, there isn't much of a difference between a pirate rapier, a katana and... a machete.
• Amulet of Dependency: It's either carrying an Atlantean gizmo or a fetish made by a voodoo priest... or you must offer blood to even use magic. Lots of blood.
• Ancient Conspiracy:
  • The Terra Arcanum is a secret organization created by the Atlanteans to prevent humanity from finding out about or entering the Hollow Earth. Over the centuries they have become a network of power brokers who control the Earth's leaders and institutions.
  • Order of the Temple of the Rosy Cross is just the most recent face of the same hermenetic society that was also behind things like the Freemasons (the actual, medieval ones), the Knights Templar, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and many, many more. The society itself is so decentralised and self-organising that there is very little control over new organisations branching out of it.
• Animate Dead: The more decayed the body, the harder it gets, so things like Dem Bones are incredibly hard to create and maintain, but freshly slain targets can be whisked back at the drop of a hat. Beware of characters like voodoo priests, for they might bring back slain guards without any effort.
• Annoying Arrows: Zig-Zagged. Bows are on par with most pistols when it comes to pre-definied damage, but since the actual damage comes from combination of Stat, Skill, Specialisation and then the Damage Rating of the weapon itself, arrows can be just as lethal as anything else. If this wasn't enough, arrows tend to be volleyed while escaping from natives, so their (theoretical) low damage very quickly can add up, as continuous attacks face less and less Defense with each attempt in the same round.
• Armor Is Useless: Nope. An actual, antiquated set of armour, or even Chainmail Bikini of the Amazons, is more than enough to make it impossible to hit, regardless of source. And that without brining up remains of Atlantean technology or some high-tech gizmos. When a shield-bearer is also wearing a set of armour, they synergise, for really high defensive values. And most importantly, the Defense rating provided by armour sets counts as Passive, allowing to use all manner of close-quarters special moves without fear of exposing your own guard.
• Arrows on Fire: They deal -1 damage (which is a significant debuff by the game standards), but can obviously set things on fire. More importantly, they allow to scare off large game and dinosaurs, that normally would be very hard challenges to deal with.
• Attack Its Weak Point: One of the Called Shots allows to do just that, with devastating results if the attack lands.
• Auto Doc: The Secrets of the Surface World supplement had an Auto-Doctor as a possible Weird Science gadget.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • In the baseline game, almost all of the Resources were great for roleplaying (especially when gained during the gameplay, rather than from character generation), and lacked any practical application, since the default state for characters was being trapped inside the Hollow Earth itself, thus rendering things like Wealth, Fame or Contacts completely superfluous, requiring to outright ignore the setting itself to make them useful for anything. Thankfully, Secrets of the Surface World salvaged most of them (especially Rank, as it formalised mechanics for secret organisations, along with putting forth lore for pre-existing ones). But even then, Status remained a roleplaying gimmick: for 15 (and its multiplications, up to 75) experience points, your character is recognised in-universe as an esteemed professional and gains an income source from their profession - which pales in comparison with what Wealth does. A single rank of Wealth and Fame does what takes 3 ranks of Status.
  • Short for highly specific circumstances and even more specific builds, Dual Wielding is just not worth it. On paper, it allows two attacks per round or just swapping between two vastly different weapons without wasting a round to do so. In reality, it applies penalties so high, you are more likely to miss your attacks completely.
• Awesomeness by Analysis:
  • Variety of scholarly skills provide just as many benefits, both in non-combat and combat situations, simply by providing big bonus to other actions (often party-wide) after successfully analysing or deducting something.
  • Talent "Calculated Defense" uses characters Intelligence instead of standard Dexterity to provide Defense rating. In other words - your character evaluated the situation and parried incoming blow due to reading opponents tactics, rather than being good in combat.
• Background Magic Field: Magic is everywhere and can be used by anyone with proper training, but it will exert the body. Certain places are better than others for this, too.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Necromancy itself is very ambigious: it starts out relatively harmless, but then goes through things like curses, causing harm or even summoning an Eldritch Abomination. But it can be freely used by even by the purest of heart characters, as long as they know how to cast it.
• Badass Bureaucrat: The example G-Man character is a competent federal investigator fully capable of field inquiry and defending himself... along with having very high Bureaucracy skill rating.
• Bare-Handed Blade Block: It is possible to perform a Brawl-related Block action against an attack with a Melee weapon, although it suffers a -2 penalty.
• Beast Man: The entire slew of them, first only hinted at, but by Mysteries of the Hollow Earth, introduced with stats and even char-gen rules, including even unique Talents for different species. Other than those listed below, the expansion provides a set of rules to crank out any other species the game master or players might encounter in their games.
  • Ape Men, who also come in a giant variant.
  • Gillmen, who cover a vast collection of humanoid species characterised by their ability to breath underwater.
  • Greenmen, who due to being plant lifeform live for centuries.
  • Hawkmen, a species of hawk-headed, flying humanoids that try to out-perform everyone else in a Proud Warrior Race Guy department.
  • Lizardmen, the local equivalent of Always Chaotic Evil, since obviously Reptiles Are Abhorrent.
  • Mantismen, who are really tough to kill due to their thick carapaces.
  • Mole Men, who can dig faster than most creatures can run thanks to their massive claws.
  • Pantherman, who combine Scarily Competent Tracker with Sexy Cat Person - regardless of gender.
• Been There, Shaped History:
  • Terra Arcanum actively meddled in the affairs of the world since there has been any kind of human civilization. Various events, but also political plays, assassinations, wars, destruction of specific places etc., were all their doings, either as Masquerade Enforcers or because they considered this or that group, country or an entire civilisation was getting too far ahead of itself.
  • Likewise, much of human knowledge and scientific progress was accomplished by an early version of the Order of the Prometheus and then safeguarded by them during the Dark Ages, after which they spearheaded the Renaissance.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Since at least the Renaissance, all the prominent scientists and philosophers were members of the Order of Prometheus or were invited to join it.
• Big Eater: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. Any character with the Flaw of Ravenous must eat twice as much as normal or suffer from the effects of starvation.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Hollow Earth is home to all sorts of long-extinct species. Including a whole host of anthropods in sizes that allow them to easily bite and tear off limbs.
• Black-and-White Morality: Invoked within the tips on how to run a game. Your job as a GM is to run pulp adventure, where as part of the genre conventions the villains are clear-cut bad guys, their mooks had it coming and the heroes are the force of good against all that's wicked and evil.
• Black Magic: Necromancy school of magic. It starts relatively harmless, simply allowing to perform a Spooky Séance to summon a spirit, but things go very dark very fast from there.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: As one of the basic moves for Called Shots, no less!
• Blood Magic: Magic runs almost literally on blood that has to be sacrificed to cast spells. It makes no difference who or what is the source, as long as it is drained out of sufficient amount of ichor. Once the magic is done, the blood burns out, leaving only oily soot behind.
• Blow Gun: One of the favourite weapons of lizardmen, especially those that can't spit poison on their own. The weapon itself does damage depending on the toxin the darts were covered with, ranging from a mild nuisance to a death sentence. What makes blowguns special is the fact they always deal the fixed damage on hit from the toxin, rather than using leftover successes from the attack roll - making it in the same harder to hit (no bonus dice from the weapon itself), but dealing very high and consistent damage when the hit lands. It is also possible to use them as an improvised delivery system for Tranquillizer Darts, where they will in turn deal non-lethal damage, capabe of knocking down the target.
• Blown Across the Room: If the damage dealt by the attack exceeds Strength of the target, they are sent flying back. This is particularly useful when having a dramatic battle at a cliffside or when using your fists.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Hunting rifles. Cheap, reliable, long-ranged, but also bog-standard, without any weird or special features. This is part of what makes them so good - they are easier to repair and they almost never misfeed, which is a common issue with automatic weapons, requiring to clear the jam.
  • Martial Arts from Secrets of the Surface World also include very mundane boxing and savate. While they lack the sheer awesomeness of other martial arts, they are just as effective to use in fight. If not more effective, since they have no extra requirements for all the flashy stuff.
  • Putting a single point into broad utility skills like Driving, Athletics, Survival and similar, regardless of who the character was during char-gen or evolves into. This prevents the -2 penalty for unskilled checks and allows them to deal with lesser obstacles when suddenly the situation calls for it or to simply stand a chance to even try.
• Bottomless Magazines: Downplayed with Instant Reload Talent. As long as characters with it have either spare ammo or mags, they can keep firing their guns without having to use action to reload (it becomes a reflexive one, which is a free move). They can still simply run out of ammunition, but chances are, the combat encounter will be long over before that happens.
• Brandishment Bluff: The game outright suggest to use Performance for this in combat situations. Who knows - maybe the Mooks will not feel lucky to see if your gun is loaded or if you actually have a gun, rather than just jabbing their back with a finger.
• Bringing Back Proof: A recurring motive with characters' Motivations is bringing proofs of Hollow Earth's existence, be it for Truth, Faith... or Revange.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. In the city of El Dorado the royal family are all descended from the Sun God. It is common for brothers and sisters to marry each other and have children to preserve their bloodline.
• Brutal Brawl: Zig-Zagged. On one hand, default umarmed combat (and its aptly named skill, Brawl) is explicitly non-lethal punch-out to simply knock your targets down with a few punches. On the other, with the right opponents, it can reach the point of the infamous They Live! brawl, where neither of the fighters will go down nor be capable of knocking the other out, leading to an extended, brutal punch-out. And all of that without even adding how changed unarmed combat can be when at least one combatant has the Lethal Blow Talent^note allowing to deal lethal damage instead of non-lethal or the Martial Arts skill from Secrets of the Surface World.
• But I Read a Book About It: Depending on specific values for Stats and Skills, this is how skill synergy can play out. The character can have but a single level (on a 0-5 scale) of a specific Skill, but as long as the end result is a Skill Rating of 4 or higher, it offers a +2 bonus via synergy whenever applicable.
• Cargo Cult: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. Cargo cultist tribes live by collecting items from the surface world that reach the Hollow Earth as flotsam and jetsam or inside beached ships or crashed airplanes. They worship the gods that they believe send them the items and even create "landing fields" to encourage them to send more.
• Cast from Hit Points:
  • One of the ways to use magic at all is to simply sacrifice own blood. It's not advised, for obvious reasons, but it allows to draw power in a pinch, when lacking a proper sacrifice. Also, characters can simply enhance the effect of their spells, gaining +2 to Sorcery rating for each point of non-lethal damage taken. Interestingly, while normally reaching 0 HP via non-lethal damage would render a character unconscious, when casting spells, the casting takes precedence, so characters will dramatically fall to the ground after doing some serious magic.
  • Any weird science gizmo can come with "Exhausting" limitation. As a result, users take 1 point of non-lethal damage each time they use that contraption, and examples provided cite causes like uncomfortable controls or excess heat.
  • Alchemical items in the supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth.
    • The Life Channeling enchantment allows the user to power the item by inflicting either nonlethal damage on themselves or lethal wounds on other creatures.
    • Blood Offering drawback. An item recharges its powers (so they can be cast again) by inflicting lethal wounds on other creatures.
    • Exhausting drawback. Each time an item is used it inflicts a point of non-lethal damage on the user.
    • Toxic drawback. Each time an item is used it inflicts a point of lethal damage on the user.
• Chainmail Bikini: Yes, the Amazons wear those. Well, Plate Bikini, to be specific. It's far less funny when you have to face them in combat, since it works just like any other high-grade armour.
• Chameleon Camouflage: One of the feats of the Lizardmen. When playing as one, it has to be picked as an unique Talent.
• Chandler's Law: Named "Keep It Moving" in the core rulebook. The goal of the scenario is to be constantly on the move, with near endless action at a neck-breaking pace. Whenever some element starts to get stagnant or lost momentum, throw a fitting danger on the party.
  When in doubt what to do next, opt for action!
• Changing Gameplay Priorities: The game has very clear "phases" of character development vs. the accessible pool of experience points. Early on, squeezing narrow Specialisations is the key to making characters really good in specific fields. Then come broader Skills, but only at the first level, to prevent the unskilled check penalty (and to open the option for Specialisations). Eventually, however, due to the mounting costs, it becomes more feasible to get Talents or Resources (or upgrade the starting ones), since they will be cheaper than any other option - even if they start out as prohibitively expensive. Eventually, Stats will be cheaper than getting a new rank for a single Skill - and they affect all related Skills, too.
• Church Militant: Ordo Umbra, responsible for all the dirty work that has to be done for or in the name of the Catholic Church. By all accounts, it's a modern take on a knight order, but instead of soldiers, they mostly produce deadly spies.
• Cliffhanger: An integral part of both the pre-made scenarios for the game and the encouraged style of running your own. There is an extensive subchapter dealing with the subject and how to use them properly to create tension.
• Combat Tentacles: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth
  • The Kraken is a 100 foot long Giant Squid with tentacles powerful enough to tear open a ship.
  • The Giant Octopus has eight tentacles that can grapple and damage opponents.
• Come with Me If You Want to Live: This Stock Phrase is used by Erich Reinhardt in the adventure "Prisoner of the Reich" in the Secrets of the Surface World supplement.
• Compelling Voice: One of the applications of the Atlantean Language is to force people to do things in a compulsive, uncontrollable manner.
• Concealment Equals Cover: Played with. Anything can provide a cover, but all the frail things will be simply destroyed in no time under the pressure of concentrated attacks. A stone piller will obviously be better than a turned table in the long run, but both provide some protection and cover, making aiming harder.
• Cool, but Inefficient:
  • The selection of unique Talents that increase the rating of related stats (for example, Agile offering +1 Dexterity rating) is only worthwhile if said stat is already at 3 or higher. Otherwise, the cost of the Talent will be greater than simply raising the related stat to 3. And if you have a stat on 3 or 4, why would you even need to add +1 to it with a Talent, and a unique one at that? Their main use is to get an option to rise the related stat to 6 (instead of normal maximum of 5), but that would require to pick the Talent and either set the related stat to 5 during chargen or hoard at the very least 25 and then 30 experience (which is an enormous amount) to get that stat from 4 to 6.
  • Instant Reload, an unique Talent (thus only viable for picking during character creation), sounds like the coolest thing ever, as it allows your character to instantly reload all firearms without costing an action. But short of the Archaic subclass, all firearms present in the game come with magazines or drums and before your gun will run dry, the combat might as well be over. Then there is the question if your character even has spare bullets left to reload in the first place.
  • Flurry and Rapid Shot, as special attacks, rather than Talents. They allow for multiple attacks per round, but with such a high penalty, it's either complete desperation or investing in the related Talents, under same name, to remove the penalty. The total investment to make multiple attacks viable means you can simply use Area of Effect weapons or attacks, get a better weapon or simply specialise in a given skill to not require multiple attacks to drop your targets dead. They get extra inefficient when Continuous Combat rules are used, since there is no point multiplying attacks on your move, when you can simply move fast enough to get two regular moves before others, without any extra penalties to it.
  • Kip Up, another unique Talent, offers the option to get up from the ground without taking an action after being knocked down. It can only be obtained during chargen. And it's a Talent, so it's worth 15 experience points. To make things even worse, you can instead get Dodge or Parry as a Talent and thus have related actions count as reflexive (read: free action), so you won't even be knocked down in the first place. Overall, it's a highly situational gimmick, but made ten times worse because of the unique status.
  • Jack of All Trades, a Talent from Secrets of the Surface World, is incredibly inefficient. For 15 experience points, your character removes the -2 penalty for rolling a skill they otherwise possess at 0. At rank 2 of the Talent (and 30 experience), characters gain a +1 to related rolls. Meanwhile, for 30 experience, you can raise 15 different skills (out of the total of 35 there are in the game) to 1, and you don't have to hoard those points, but spend them freely every time you have just 2. Plus of course there are skills you gain during character creation, further decreasing utility of JoAT. There is a very narrow window where the Talent is a solid pick (it enables the use of specialist skills without having the actual specialisation, which is handy for skills like Pilot or Craft), but there are simply better ways to use those points and/or starting Talent.
  • While Followers, a Resource type, are part of a game-breaking combination when used by Allies (another Resource type), on their own, they are not worth their price. They are much weaker than Allies (while costing the exact same amount of points) and their main advantage is in their numbers. In particular, when picking Followers as just a single, but stronger character, you are buying an Ally without the advantages of one (namely - a starting Resource/Talent slot).
  • Using starting Resource slot to get an Artifact, due to those Artifact being always tier 1. Things like Jet Packs, Utility Guns, Rocket Cars, Atlantean Phase Books and similar are tier 2, while tier 1 is reserved for minor modifications and Flawed Prototypes of gear or things that can only be used once per entire session. Unless you really want to get something and thus can swallow the Necessary Drawback to knock it down to tier 1, it's just not worth the Resource or Talent that is given away to get such an Artifact.
• Counter-Attack: Counter-Stike (Brawl and Martial Arts) and Riposte (Melee) Talents allow to immediately perform an attack after successful Block/Parry action.
• Creepy Centipedes: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth
  • The Arthropleura is 6 foot long, has 50 pairs of legs and a vicious bite.
  • The giant centipede grows up to ten feet long and two feet wide and has a pair of forcipules (poison-injecting pincers).
• Critical Existence Failure: Averted. Not only the game tracks separately lethal and non-lethal damage, but hitting 0 Health isn't equal with dying - that will just render a character unconscious. Only reaching -5 Health will finally kill someone. On top of that, the Diehard Talent not only extends the threshold to -7, but also prevents the whole unconscious part.
• Critical Failure: Rolling 0 successes in a check means a critical failure. The severity of it is tied to how difficult the initial task was: an easy task will cause some trivial issue, but a tough one might prevent entirely a retry (breaking a lock in a door when trying to pick it) or even cause a dramatic catastrophe (crash-landing a plane during a storm).
• Cunning Linguist: A sufficiently high Linguistics skill definitely qualifies any character for such a role. The skill is based on Intelligence, and it covers the ability to not only understand and use foreign languages, but also create and break codes, Reading Lips and even communicate via gestures.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: The logic behind Style points, particularly when they are used to boost Talents or shrug off damage. For the rest of the scene (or the whole combat encounter), a Talent rank can be temporarily increased, a dangerous amount of lethal damage can be ignored or more dice can be rolled for a crucial skill check. The power-up lasts only for the duration of that specific bit of the scenario, reverting characters back to normal once the scene is over.
• Damage Reduction:
  • What the Defense rating is all about, if in a roundabout way. Since the combat mechanics operate on the principle that damage is part of the same roll as the attack itself, Defense first and foremost decreases the probability of being hit, increasing the number of successes required to land the hit at all. Any surplus still left is turned into damage. So high enough Defence allows you to reduce things like a point-blank burst from a submachine gun to Scratch Damage.
  • One of the applications for Style points. For 2 of them, one can ignore 1 point of lethal damage as if it simply didn't happen.
• Dash Attack: A character or a creature may make a Charge attack, which involves making a normal move and using a Melee or Brawl attack on an enemy. It offers a handy +2 bonus to the attack itself, but it obviously consumes the Move action that round, and, like most such moves, leaves the character with only a Passive Defense value.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Each consecutive attack in the same round applies a -2 debuff to the target's Defense. This means a group of Mooks can eventually overwhelm the player characters, simply by all of them trying to attack the same person. This also works in the opposite direction - the party can face off against a T. Rex with inadequate weapons, but since everyone is shooting at it, even the weaker attacks can land, simply due to the volume of those attacks.
• Dead Man Writing: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. The journal of Professor Alexander Trader details his exploration of the Hollow Earth. The journal was found abandoned: Professor Trader's fate is unknown. Near the end of the journal it says:
  If you are reading this, then all is lost for me, and I most certainly have already shuffled off this mortal coil. My life will not have been in vain, however, if this journal makes it to those who can appreciate my discoveries.
• Deflector Shields: Theurgy magic allows for the creation of all types and shapes of those: directional, spherical bubbles, covering the entire party... even the weakest one provides a substantial +2 Defense rating, but it can go as far as +8, making it all but impossible to land an attack.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment: The Secrets of the Surface World expansion provided extensive rules for using weird science to make gear. The applications range from minor modifications and even simple accessories to elaborate prototypes that are completely new design. That same expansion provided an extensive list of "standard" gear, too, both for direct use and as a reference point to players.
• Diesel Punk: Downplayed. There are some crazy inventions, but rather than trying to be anachronistic or just building modern machines with 30s' tech, it's instead superscience straight from pulp magazines. It's also relatively rare and always outlandish, rather than commonplace and fully practical.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: Third of the Talents that have ranks fall into this category. While they provide useful benefits at higher ranks, they are not as useful as the basic one, while retaining the pricetag. Meanwhile those introduced in expansions go the opposite direction - their benefits are squared, rather than linear, causing Power Creep.
• The Disease That Shall Not Be Named: The Moneyman example character is having one of those. He admits that he doesn't really care what's the name of the illness that's slowly killing him. But the doctors said that it would take a miracle, so why not to fund one...
• Doom Magnet:
  • One of the potential Flaws to pick. Unlike the majority of them, this one means the GM is given free hand to bring all sorts of surprises to your character, Chandler-style.
  • The Atlantean Scion, a teenage girl of Atlantean heritage and an example character from one of the expansions, is one of those, as trouble always seems to find her.
• Dread Zeppelin:
  • The Nazis use zeppelins extensively, and a whole lot of the artwork in the main rulebook and expansions has them fighting from those - or being targets for attacks by the Hollow Earth's natives. Many of those airships are also experimental models with various flaws to be worked out for future military use.
  • Subverted in the example scenario, The Hollow Earth Expedition. The characters arrive to the Hollow Earth on board of an airship built by Umberto Nobile, still trying to find Roald Amundsen, decade after his disappearance. The Nazis get there in an U-boot instead.
• Drowning My Sorrows: One of the example characters, the Psychic Detective, turned to the bottle as a way of dealing with all the voices and being Plagued by Nightmares. He starts with Addiction: Alcohol as a result.
• Drives Like Crazy: Any character with sufficiently high Drive or Pilot skill in general, and specifically those that have the Reckless Driver Talent in the Secrets of the Surface World expansion.
• Dual Wielding/Guns Akimbo: Doable, but given the tone of the game, gets a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome - you get high penalty to both the secondary hand and the second attack, up to the point where the secondary hand/attack will be completely ineffective, unless having really high Skill Rating. The only way to reduce those penalties is to purchase Talent "Dual Wield", but to truly get rid of it, you need to buy all three ranks of it, for a total of 45 experience, which is an exorbitant price^note It is actually cheaper to just buy 4 ranks of specialisation in given weapon type for 12 experience points, than even a single rank of the related Talent, while gaining +4 bonus to all situations regarding that particular skill, rather than only reducing penalty to Dual Wielding.
• Dump Stat: The game notably subverts this. Due to the way everything is designed and arranged, no matter the character, they will never have a useless stat or end up punished for specialising in something and thus decreasing the value of another stat. Variety of Talents even allows players to substitute one stat for another when calculating ratings and rolling dice.
• Early Game Hell: Averted, making the game stand out among Point Build Systems. By design, starting characters are fully competent in their respective fields, while the way experience is gained allows them to reap the biggest gains early on. On top of that, if the theme of the campaign is getting trapped inside the Hollow Earth, then early game will be the only time when the party will have all their supplies - and especially ammo stock - at full capacity.
• Egomaniac Hunter: The character creation process is explained while creating one of those - an overconfident big game hunter, who joins the expedition to the Hollow Earth solely for the prospect of an exotic safari, having matching Stats, Skills, Talents and even Flaw to fit into the character idea.
• Enemy Mine: One of the example situations covers a combat scene where a player character yells in German to a group of Thule Society soldiers to band together against lizardmen, followed by a Diplomacy check. While the check fails, the game openly encourages this sort of behaviour and the player is even granted a Style point for quick thinking.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: To avoid confusion and maintain its trademark speed of gameplay, the game deliberately uses as many obvious and descriptive names for Skills, Talents, and Resources as feasible.
• Fainting: The standard result of pushing it too hard with magic and Psychic Powers — and thus taking enough non-lethal damage for Health to reach 0 (or less).
• Famed In-Story: What Fame and, to a lesser extent, Status Resources are. Famous characters gain +2 to all social rolls against people that recognise them or when acting within their field of expertise, making it worthwhile to formalise the various achievements and played-through scenarios into lasting renown. This also includes a variety of NPCs, who can use this against players.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: A glorious subversion. Due to the way how Ubiquity is designed and calculated, it prevents characters from being pigeonholed and locked in specific bracket. Even the archetypes that the game uses are more of informative than a class-like compartment to put characters into, and the main rules explicitly state (with examples) that people can make widely different characters within the same archetype or even character idea without much issue.
• Flamethrower Backfire: A person wearing a flamethrower is a potential walking bomb if gunfire hits the flamethrower.
• Flawed Prototype: The easiest and cheapest way of designing new equipment via weird science and plain, old science is to give it some flaw. The game even lists various types of flaws to juggle around, like extra weight, terrible controls or being Made of Explodium. The flaws aren't necessary, but they significantly decrease the requirements to make the desired gear.
• Food Pills: Nutrient Pills, a possible Artifact Resource in the Secrets of the Surface World supplement.
• For Science!: One of the most likely motivations for Academics. The motivation for the mad variety.
• Fungus Humongous
  • Main rules. One of the more exotic surface terrain types in the Hollow Earth is forests of towering mushrooms.
  • Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. Moletown is the underground cave city of the Molemen. The cave that holds the Temple of the Worm has huge forests of phosphorescent fungi, and the fungus farm has fungi that achieve towering heights.
• Gangland Drive-By: The aptly named Talent, Drive-By Attack, not only greatly reduces penalties when firing from a moving vehicle (up to the point of Improbable Aiming Skills), but also offers an option to Lead the Target with far better results.
• Ghostapo: Thule Society, along with few other Nazi organisations, and the Gestapo itself, are all active players in the setting, each in search of the lost Atlantean technology or to at least study the magic and occult for practical applications.
• Giant Enemy Crab: supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. The giant crab can grow up to 25 feet long and has claws that are six feet long.
• Giant Spider: One type of monster PCs can encounter inside the Hollow Earth are giant meat-eating arachnids that are 10 feet long (not including the legs). They hunt like normal spiders, injecting a paralyzing poison with their bite and cocooning the prey to eat later.
• Giant Squid: Kraken are 100 foot long 40 ton squids powerful enough to capsize ships and eat their crews. They can also drag a ship deep underwater and let the pressure and lack of air do their dirty work for them.
• Glass Cannon: Magic users, characters either using More Dakka or meticulous aiming or melee combatants charging their targets all pose to deal a crapload of extra damage... but are only left with their Passive Defense for the duration, being greatly exposed to counter-attacks and thus even easier to kill.
• The Great Depression: The background for the setting, as it's 1935 and parts of the world are still affected one way or another. It's not so important in the baseline rulebook, but expansions - especially those focusing on the surface world - make extensive use of it as a ripple affecting people. A lot of period-accurate slang is also spread through the books.
• God Guise:
  • Vril-ya are doing their very best to (quite successfully) convince everyone and their dog they are Atlanteans, rather than their former servants who filled the power void and kept all the ancient machinery running due to their genuine expertise in maintenance.
  • Titans sometimes pose as gods in order to receive offerings (food, water etc.) from primitive tribes. They are helped in this trickery by the fact that an adult titan is twice as tall as a human, and an old titan can be as much as thirty feet tall.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Happens twice to Thule Society. They realised too late what exactly they did and who they put in power, and by the time they've tried to counter the course of action, they were already sidelined. Their grand plan to come back to power was to convince Nazi higher-ups they needed a dedicated, formal organisation for the study of the mysteries of the world and occult powers, ostentiably for the incoming war. Thinking they can subvert it right at the inception, the Society instead ended up locked in an Interservice Rivalry with a freshly minted Ahnenerbe, further sidelining themselves and access to the resources they were after from the start.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: In the basic ruleset, that's what the Brawl skill was - just punching, in a bar-brawl style. It wasn't until Secrets of the Surface World expansion that actual Martial Arts were added to the game.
• Good Pays Better: The first two ranks of White Magic offer some of the most useful rituals and the rest are not bad, either. Meanwhile, the less ambigious and more straightforward evil Black Magic gets, the less useful and more risky its spells get.
• Grappling with Grappling Rules: This being an Ubiquity game, it's just a single contested check, making it as easy to perform as any other action. What distinguishes grappling is the requirement for a double check from a single roll and against atypical values: first if the grappling happened at all (Brawl vs. Size of the target, rather than standard Defense) and then if it was successful (remaining "damage" vs. Strength of the target). In practical terms, it means that trying to grapple something big and strong is bound to fail, while smaller and weaker targets are significantly easier to grapple or even pin down. While grappling itself isn't hard to pull or read from dice, when you consider all it does is immobilise the target, there are easier and faster ways to achieve that effect, and ones that aren't so easily countered.
• Great White Hunter: One of the most commonplace archetype for combat-oriented characters, to the point where example character creation is dedicated to making one of those. After all, who else would you expect in a setting where dinos and megafauna are commonplace and far more deadly than any contemporary game?
• Guide Dang It!: The official GM screen came with a 16-page booklet covering Continuous Combat, a handful of new, highly useful Talents, new archetypes and a decent sample scenario. The booklet can still be purchased to this day in PDF format. You are welcome.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Atlanteans and humans can - or rather could if Atlanteans were still around - fully interbreed. There are dozens of people who have some trace of Atlantean lineage in them. As a result, they at the very least live longer than regular humans, while often displaying other special properties. Both Terra Arcanum and Thule Society are searching for those, though for completely different purposes. The Grand Masters of the Terra Arcanum are the purest Atlantis lineage accessible at any given moment, allowing them to perform Highlander-like identity swaps for decades or even centuries - something that the rest of the organisation is unaware of.
• Hammerspace: A very specific variant of it: characters are always allowed to get out of their pockets some small object that would be handy and isn't exactly equipment or gear (so things like a pencil, a box of matches, but not the plot-important map or a set of pick-locks) and unless explicitly robbed or searched for, also some small amount of money as pocket change (default as up to 5 dollars, but further tied with Wealth Resource, should character have it, so the "pocket change" gets relative for truly rich characters).
• Healing Factor: The game has several versions of this.
  • All creatures inside the Hollow Earth heal at twice the normal rate. People have gone to sleep severely injured and woken up completely healed.
  • Anyone with the Quick Healer Talent heals at twice the normal rate. This benefit is cumulative with the Hollow Earth healing bonus above, for a total benefit of healing at four times the normal rate.
  • Lizardmen can regenerate damaged organs and lost limbs. A finger takes a week, an eye or other small organ in two weeks, and a tail, arm or leg in five weeks. This benefit is cumulative with the above examples.
  • Inhabitants of Shangri-La heal at four times the rate of the surface world, and anyone who spends a year there will have lost limbs begin to regenerate and birth defects disappear.
• Healing Hands: That is literally how the healing spell is named. And it also requires to literally lay hands on the injured area to close the wound and heal any damage done to the body.
• The Heavy: Known as Villainous Henchmen, they are integral part of any self-respecting, long running campaign. The core rulebook discuss their role for garnishing the story and how they might not be the most important villain, but the one players will interact with the most - and thus should be made memorable.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: One of the basic plot hooks for a party that's been playing for a while is Terra Arcanum taking notice of them (especially when someone decided to buy a rank of Fame Resource after expeditions to the Hollow Earth) and starting the effort to simpy discredit them, even going as far as framing them into some crime, providing a handy Clear My Name scenario.
• Heroic Resolve:
  • Whenever the life of character is in danger, they perform a Willpower roll, rather than anything related with their physical stats. In fact, Willpower is even part of equation to determine total Health.
  • Diehard is a Talent that makes characters immune to falling unconscious due to their Health reaching 0. More importantly, it allows to shrug off damage that would normally kill anyone else, while keep going, despite having negative Health.
• Historical Domain Character: Numerous real-life explorers, cultists, politicians, scientists and military figures pop-up as important NPCs. Even the introductionary scenario has the party search for Roald Amundsen on behalf of Umberto Nobile, guilty-ridden over getting his own friend missing.
• Historical Villain Upgrade:
  • In real life, Thule Society was completely irreverent by 1936 and even prior to that, it was just your regular interwar occult group. Here, it's a genuine cabal of sorcerers who pulled enough clout and strings to ultimately put the Nazis in charge of Germany, for their own personal plans and easy access to national resources.
  • The Dominican Order, while somewhat infamous for being "dogs of the pope" and actually meddling in politics in a few instances, is made much more powerful. They are also the foundation for Ordo Spectare and Ordo Umbra, two secret agencies answering only to the Pope.
• Hollow World: The main setting of the game.
• Horn Attack: Creatures that attack with their horns/antlers include the Triceratops, aurochs, "Giant Unicorn" (a huge rhinoceros), Irish Elk (a giant deer) and wooly rhinoceros. The supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth adds the Pentaceratops and Styracosaurus (which are similar to Triceratops), the Pelorovis (similar to the aurochs) and the Brontotherium (another rhinoceros-like animal), as well as normal (surface world) animals such bulls, deer and rhinoceroses.
• Horse of a Different Color: Mysteries of the Hollow Earth introduced proper rules for mounts and riding. So, while the setting is the Lost World, and thus the picks are quite exotic, they mostly function as if it were just a horse. Ironically, the expansion doesn't cover "normal" horsemanship, while the basic rulebook simply lists Ride as a skill in the most blunt and direct fashion feasible.
• House System: Ubiquity, a dice pool system based on counting evens.
• Human Sacrifice:
  • Since magic requires blood and quite a lot of it, it's one of the most straightforward ways to gain it, especially if the mage isn't desperate enough to sacrifice their own blood. However, it is not required to kill anyone. Merely, each lethal wound turns into +2 to Sorcery roll and it can even be done voluntarily, when each party members draws their blood to fuel some important spell in haste. An actual human sacrifice would be an incredibly powerful source of magic, given just how big bonus to Sorcery rating it would generate.
  • Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. The Sun God priests in the city of El Dorado cut the hearts out of sacrifices with a razor sharp quartz knife, then hold them up while they're still beating.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. Cannibals hunt, kill and eat human beings. Molemen will capture and eat humans who intrude into Moletown and those who encounter their hunting parties on the surface.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: A combination of various Talents, specialisation in a given weapon type and sheer Skill rating allow one to pull off impossible shots. Then there are also trick shots involving ricochets and similar.
• Improvised Bandage: They cause a -2 penalty to the Medicine roll, but you still need to use something to patch the wounds in the first place, making them better than not being able to perform the action at all.
• Intrepid Reporter: One of the example characters and a highly advised template for player character, both in tune of Malone and Penny, since covering or trying to debunk the expedition of other characters is a self-playing idea.
• Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality: As a rule of thumb, the "non-combat" skills not only have far greater utility, but can even be used in the middle of a fight, allowing to disarm, convince, confuse or simply evade entirely the enemies, not to mention spotting additional options and possibilities for the whole party. Meanwhile, clear-cut combat skills have close to no application outside of the fight. Similarly, various tools and equipment elements allow to completely ignore the lack of corresponding skills (like climbing gear offering "free" ranks in Athletics), but weapons only increase damage output of combat checks.
• Island Base: If a character has the Resource of Refuge 5 they have a secret island base with everything they could want.
• Jack of All Trades: The Jack of All Trades Talent in the Secrets of the Surface World supplement. It allows to ignore the -2 untrained penalty check and also make checks of advanced skills that normally are completely barred without having at least a single rank to them. As a result, your character might still not be an expert, but has an enormous edge over people without that Talent, no matter how inefficient the Talent itself is.
• Jet Pack: This is an Artifact Resource in the main rules and the Secrets of the Surface World supplement. It has a speed of 100 m.p.h. If the wearer carries another person, top speed is cut in half and maneuverability is reduced.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Necromancy as a whole. Tier 1 spell? A ritual to summon a spirit and make a regular seance with it - and the spirits actually like those, being finally able to communicate with the living. Tier 5? Tearing a hole in the fabric of the Universe and summoning an Eldritch Abomination - without a guarantee it's going to be docile.
• Kill It with Fire: Zig-Zagged. Warmth wakes up Antarctic horrors, which is what kick-started the plot of The Frozen City of Terror. However, once they are awake, a flamethrower is a perfect way of disposing of them, as it's one of the few weapons that can cover a whole corridor in a single attack, and doing so far more effective than just about anything else.
• King in the Mountain: At least on Mars, the Atlanteans entered a kind of hibernation. Their physical bodies are sleeping in hidden places. But they can still manifest physical avatars that contain a fraction of their power, to effect the world.
• Lady Land: Amazons society operates as a Straw Feminist matriarchy. They have very low opinion on men and consider them not worth doing anything else than tending the kitchen. And no, none of them wants a Hercules. Mysteries of the Hollow Earth openly mentions they pacify menfolk with brutal means whenever they get the uppity to demand something else than their traditional role.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: The Fifth Columnists, the secret organisation of "German patriots" within the Thule Society. In other words - the "good" Nazis fighting against a cabal of evil, power-hungry sorcerors, for the betterment of Germany and its true destiny.
• Life Drain: One of the less nasty things Necromancy can do to people.
• Lost World: Dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts, such as Cenozoic mammals and giant Paleozoic arthropods, abound in the Hollow Earth.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Subverted. Style points allow to add extra dice to a specific roll, but that doesn't affect the outcome itself (you can still roll even a Critical Failure). Similarly, chance dice allow to roll more, but at an increased penalty, balancing any gain achieved this way and simply making it a gamble. Chance dice, on the other hand, allow you to roll normally impossible check: even if it fails, it can still potentially cause less harm than a roll that is outright impossible to make.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Downplayed. Shields do provide a bit of Passive Defense and as such, make it harder to be hit by any sort of attack. However, that value is rather low and is only worth it when paired with a decent armour.
• MacGyvering: The incredibly useful Talent, Jury Rig, allows to perform repairs without having access to spare parts. And it has three ranks, offering a +4 to Repair check when maxed out. This can be further combined with Tinker Talent, removing penalties for lack of proper tools, too.
• Mad Scientist: The game explicitly differs between regular Academics doing research and obsessive Scientists that try to "prove something". And then are those various eggheads who Go Mad from the Revelation.
• Magic A Is Magic A: While magic powers are purposefully vaguely described and classified, using spells from the "wrong" school than the one the character knows results in a -2 penalty, as if making an unskilled roll.
• Magic Versus Science: Heavily downplayed. The only example is Medicine roll causing penalty to applying Healing Hands - but only because the shock has been stabilised using medical skills, rather than magic powers, rendering the spell pointless.
• Magical Gesture: Implied. Whenever they are unable to make them, characters suffer a debilitating -4 penalty to Sorcery (which can go as far as nullifying their entire Skill rating).
• Mama Bear: Main rules sample adventure. When the PCs first arrive in the Hollow Earth they will encounter a herd of Triceratops, including a mother and her child. If the PCs get too close the mother will charge them, and if they attack the child she will become enraged.
• The Man Behind the Man: Initiates and the first tier of agents of Terra Arcanum are clueless puppets... and so are the Overseers from the upper tier that are manipulating them. The whole organisation actively dupes its own people for the ultimate goal of keeping the existence of the Hollow Earth and Atlantis secret, even from its own ranks.
• Man-Eating Plant: As if the fauna of the Hollow Earth wasn't dangerous enough, there is also a variety of overgrown, meat-craving plants.
• The Man Makes the Weapon:
  • One of the core rules of the whole game and what allows all sort of characters shine. Weapons have pre-definied values to them, which only go so far. And for non-specialists, if given equipment comes with low value, it will remain so. But a dedicated gunslinger can easily kill someone with a tiny derringer from improbable range, while a Warrior Monk will perform Instant Death Stab with a throwing knife - despite both of those weapons being near-useless for everyone else. This further extends to variety of Talents, which allow to swap stats used for Skill rating, weaponizing high Intelligence, Willpower or Charisma for characters with lackluster physical stats, which in turn removes the typical issue various RPGs have with skill monkeys and party faces characters.
  • The trope is specifically highlighted by melee weapons. They offer a pallid bonus of just +2 to rolls, doesn't matter if it's a simple machete or an ancestral katana. If their wielder is good with melee, then they remain highly effective. If not, an average pistol is going to be better.
• Mars: The main setting the for the Planetary Romance sourcebook, Revelations of Mars.
• Masquerade Enforcer:
  • Terra Arcanum primary goal is to make sure nobody knows about the Hollow Earth, Atlantis or Atlanteans - or Terra Arcanum itself. They even self-purge any elements that start sniffing too much.
  • G-Men, the operatives of FBI's Special Investigation Unit, are The Men in Black in everything, but name. And their job is similar whenever the paranormal gets involved - make sure nobody learns anything nor remembers anything.
  • Few governmental agencies across the world are well aware of the existence of the Hollow Earth, Atlantis or even both. They are doing their damn best to keep that hidden from the public, not always for benign reasons.
• Master of None: Status Resource. It offers an income, but far less than Wealth. It offers recognition, but to a smaller degree than Fame. It has none of the secondary benefits of those Resources, too. In the end of the day, buying the first rank of Wealth and Fame, which is already terribly inefficient, still offers bigger benefits than three ranks of Status.
• Melee Disarming: Any given character can be disarmed with one of the basic Brawl and Melee moves. At mere -2 attack debuff, it is possible to either knock the weapon out of reach, or, in the case of Brawl, even steal it and brandish it right back at the target.
• The Men in Black:
  • The Paranormal Investigator archetype in the Secrets of the Surface World supplement.
  • Special Investigation Unit of the FBI, right down to experimenting with wiping out the memories of the people they've interrogated. They even face a Highly-Conspicuous Uniform penalty whenever being dressed in a black suit with a thin tie doesn't blend with the crowd.
• Metagame: A lot depends on how many and how often the GM gives Style points, and completely different gameplay emerges when they are either scarce or in abundance. By itself, the game openly expects each player will earn at the very least 2-4 Style points per session, but at the same time more than 5 is usually seen as excessive.
• Mighty Glacier: Total Defense. You can't attack and you can barely move around, but your Defense is increased by +4. To put that into perspective - that's equal to wearing a suit of Powered Armor or sitting in a foxhole.
• Monowheel Mayhem: The Wheelbike in the Weird Science chapter of the Secrets of the Surface World supplement.
• More Dakka: Automatic weapons gain +1 bonus during Burst (3 rounds) and +3 in Autofire bonus to hitting the target. It's less about aiming and more about simply saturating the area with bullets. Straffing Fire takes it a step further by not only applying an Autofire bonus but also allowing you to hit multiple targets in a single attack if they are close enough. The main downside of automatic weapons is how many bullets they use for those sorts of attacks and how uneconomic they are in the long run, which might be a problem when stuck inside the Hollow Earth.
• Multi-Melee Master: Well, the Melee skill. While it has Specialisations in Axes, Clubs, Knives, Spears and Swords, ranking up the Skill itself allows to use all of these weapons (and then some, like improvised) with the same level of expertise. Specialisation is simply added on top of the raw Melee whenever applicable.
• My Kung-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours: Optional rules for Martial Arts specifically list this sort of attitude, specifically for kung-fu: one training just to best a very specific opponent and their style of fighting.
• Mysterious Antarctica:
  • One of easiest ways of getting beneth the surface is using one of the polar shafts and a lot of weird things is going on surface of Earth around both poles thanks to said shafts.
  • Played straight with Frozen City of Terror, which is a ruin of an Atlantean City, infested by their old bio-weapon experiment. The only thing keeping it safe is the freezing temperature, but a German expedition send there started to thaw the ice...
• No Fame, No Wealth, No Service: The Travellers Club is portrayed as snobbish to a fault: to even enter their premise requires a formal invitation from a member, not to mention joining, which requires an enormous social clout (which means having an Ally Resource that's already inside), rather than actual, on-field achievements of any kind. Oh, and women are off-limits, or else that could spell the end of the English Empire. All for the sake of bragging rights, since it's just an elite clubhouse with luxurious accommodations, and it really feels out-of-place when listed right after The Explorers Club.
• No MacGuffin, No Winner: The example scenario from the main rulebook concludes with the crystal being damaged and exploding - if not due to stray bullets, then the dying heavy will shoot it just to spite the expedition members, applying If I Can't Have You… logic. But should the party be outnumbered or the combat be going really badly, the scenario suggests destroying the crystal to spite the Nazis in turn. No crystal - no winners.
• No Range Like Point-Blank Range: The game considers anything within imeediate 5 feet from the shooter to be point blank, with specific effects
  • Pistols gain a +1 to their dice pool when at point blank range.
  • Shotguns operate as Area of Effect weapons, with their blast automatically hitting everything up-close.
  • Subverted with rifles, which at this range gain a debuff of -1, due to being simply ill-fitted for range where you should rather use a buttstock or a bayonet.
  • Strangely, weapons covered by Gunnery skill (artillery, cannons, heavy machine guns and alike) are completely exempt from those rules.
• Non-Combat EXP: The game explicitly doesn't provide any experience directly from combat. It also doesn't provide any reward for theatrics, making in the rules a very clear distinction between role-playing your character and staying in-character^note That, however, can be rewarded with Style Points, at least to a certain degree. Instead, it has a system similar to Old World of Darkness, where experience points are delivered on the basis of characters achieving their goals, learning something new about themselves or the world, or having life-changing experiences^note So getting into a gunfight as a bookish researcher can be included, just not for the standard reasons how RPG games reward combat, along with a single point for mere participation. You can get no more than 5 points (one for each category) and no less than 1 - and even the most seasoned character should be able to score 2-3 points on a regular basis. In practical terms, the system prevents Power Creep, while also alleviating Early Game Hell: you will be able to simply score more points early on into adventuring (and making it pretty much impossible to not get 5/5 for the first session).
• Non-Indicative Name: Archery Skill "represents proficiency with primitive ranged weapons", including such things as bows, crossbows, slings, nets, bolas or even blowguns. To make it weirder, the game has Throwing Specialisation... under Athletics Skill, meaning you can use completely non-indicative abilities whenever using ranged weapons other than firearms.
• Not Completely Useless:
  • Quick Reflexes, the Talent increasing Initiative rating by 2, by itself is mediocre and rarely worth the pricetag, while the 2nd rank of it is outright overpriced. However, when the combat resolution is using Continuous Combat rules, Initiative becomes the most important stat, especially for characters that would otherwise fall into Mighty Glacier territory and thus desperately need to increase their Initiative. Meanwhile Fragile Speedsters become dangerously lethal, as they gain free additional actions.
  • In the same combat format, weapons and attacks described as "Fast", despite potentially having lower Damage rating, allow to act sooner and thus continously outpace enemies, disrupting their attacks and potentially even attack them twice before they can move at all, without using a multiple attack action. Daggers, knives and similar excel at this, and so do martial arts.
  • While Diminishing Returns for Balance are very firmly in place when it comes to majority of multi-level Talents, that doesn't make the Talents themselves useless. Style points allow to temporarily boost a Talent up a level, at the rate of 2 points per rank. It lasts for the rest of the combat or a scene, so with a sufficient pool of Style points, it's possible to bypass entirely how overpriced normally that Talent would be, while still have benefits of it.
  • Under normal Initiative rules, Quick Strike Talent is completely useless. However, under Continuous Combat rules, a Talent that gives a +1 Initiative bonus (up to +3 with all ranks) for already fast Brawl, Martial Arts and Melee attacks is devastating. It can go as far as offering five moves within a single round and worst case scenario, still a solid two.
  • When tinkering with gear, one of the most basic gun modifications is extending their range, adding 10/25/50/100/250 of range, at progressively bigger penalty (-2 per tier) to their design. For rifles, due to their default range, it is entirely useless and for pistols it has dubious use at best... but shotguns double their range on tier 2 modification and even the basic one is no slouch, thus completely negating their only weakness - short effective range - while still keeping their extra punch.
  • Even after introduction of Martial Arts made Brawl somehow even worse than it was in the default ruleset, it still offers a handy option for quick and easy disarming of your opponents. And one easier to pull than with the use of Martial Arts. And it is still a Fast attack, which might come in handy.
• Not-So-Safe Harbor: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. The pirate city of Bloody Bay is ruled by a cruel and heartless tyrant who overthrew the previous Pirate King. This has led to an atmosphere of paranoia and chaos in the streets, with violence rising to ten times previous levels.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: The game is pretty lenient with fall damage (1 lethal damage per 10 feet) and further decreases that with a successful Acrobatics check (-10 feet per success). And landing on or in something soft (like safety net or water) works as a cushion. But should the final fall height after Acrobatics roll be greater than 100 feet, and characters enter "terminal velocity", which will be lethal upon hitting the ground without a parachute.
• Noble Savage: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. There are entire tribes of this character type in the Hollow Earth. They are regal and wise, respecting nature and trying to maintain the ecological balance of the area where they live.
• Official Game Variant:
  • Continuous Combat. It's barely alluded to in the core rulebook, but is thoroughly covered in a booklet sold with the official GM screen (being the real reason to even buy it) and completely changes how combat, along with continuous actions, are performed: rather than strict round-by-round order of fighting and simply requiring few checks to pass a continuous action, it applies a mix of action-by-action and second-by-second, allowing to spice up combat. And, more importantly, put time pressure on non-combat tasks with game rules (like translating a mural before an Advancing Wall of Doom will crush everyone inside the trap or trying to outrun a dinosaur stompade), which would be a matter of just rolling well enough with the default ruleset, rather than  also making it on time.
  • There is a vast difference between how the occult "magick" works in the core rulebook and the actual magic and separated from it Psychic Powers are described in Secrets of the Surface World. The core book treats it more like mysticism and general esoteric knowledge. The expansion provides concrete rules for pre-existing spells and powers, along with guidelines on how to design more on your own.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Played with. On one hand, scientific skills cost as much as everything else, so trying to branch out too much during char-gen can lead to a Master of None situation. On the flipside, there are rules for skill synergy: any related skill with the rating of 4 (so Stat + related Skill) provides a +2 bonus to a primary tested skill^note Ironically, this can suddenly elevate a character with just 1 point in 6-10 different skills and 3 Intelligence into a hyper-competent specialist, despite each individual skill being utter crap, barely allowing to pass the default difficulty tests. Thus a particularly science-oriented character can easily use skill synergies to still qualify as a polymath. And there is, of course, nothing preventing players from spending experience later on to further branch out, offering a continuous benefit from learning as many Science and Academics skills.
• Omniglot: One of the things Linguistics governs is number of non-native languages the character is fluent in. And it comes with squared growth: rate of 2 offers just single foreign language, but rate of 10 gives fluency in sixteen languages. Even a more down-to-Earth skill rate of 6 still provides access to four different languages.
• One Bullet Clips: Enforced. Whenever reloading in combat, your character either loads a fresh mag or feeds directly (into the gun or an empty mag) the number of rounds equal to Dexterity. The game only ever tracks the count of ammunition. This in turn allows to abuse things like heavy machine guns, as they only fire in abstracted bursts, hitting everything within the arc, but without any "real" ammo count.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: Out of all of them, Body. It's the only stat that overlaps between Defense (and directly translates into the Passive part of it), Stun and Health substats, all of which are vital for the survival of the character. Plus there are rolls against toxins of all kinds. It doesn't do anything else and isn't even used by any skill... which is part of why it's so important: you can't substitute it with skill, gear or Talents, while Stats are pretty expensive to rise. High Body rating becomes extra-important when you plan to make a psychic or a mage, as those tend to take large amounts of non-lethal damage and on regular basis, too.
  • If skills are concerned, out of the list of 30, Intelligence is tied to 13 of them. Which is not only nearly half of them all, but also includes two combat ones. The remaining 17 skills are spread over Dexterity, Charisma and Strength.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Played with
  • The game differentiates between lethal and non-lethal damage, but in practical terms, the non-lethal part is caused by things like minor trauma, bruises, illness, Poke in the Third Eye and similar. Guns, swords, claws and alike are still going to mess characters up, dealing lethal damage.
  • Even when suffering large amounts of lethal damage, characters don't simply drop dead when hitting zero Health. Instead, they are in shock and unconscious until first aid and medical care are provided, unless hitting -5 Health. So it's perfectly possible to survive being turned into a sieve by a heavy machine gun, as long as a coup de grace doesn't follow.
• Only in It for the Money: Shanghai's Green Gang holds allegiance to hard cash. Politics, favours and personal loyalty are secondary to that. They are very open about it, along with making it known to everyone that there is Nothing Personal when they betray those who stopped being their highest bidders.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The rulebooks deliberately provide different examples, including classic voodoo zombies, Romero-like shamblers and DnD-like summons. At least the ritual to summon one rises dead bodies (the warmer, the easier the job), and the resulting creatures are mindless puppets of their master that are completely immune to a variety of status effects and non-lethal damage, while obviously Feel No Pain. They must feed on flesh - but any flesh will do - on regular basis, or they will deteriorate and wither to dust in just few days.
• People Farms: Over the centuries, Terra Arcanum subtly tried to manipulate people with Atlantean heritage to mate and strengthen their bloodline. Meanwhile, Thule Society isn't subtle about it at all, and using eugenics as an excuse, they have been actively setting those up since the 20s to get pure Atla... err, Aryans.
• Pirate: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. Pirates are a distinct culture in the Hollow Earth. They sail everything from Roman triremes to 18th century galleons.
• Place of Power: Secrets of the Surface World mentions those as an alternative way to tap into magic, rather than requiring the standard sacrifice.
• Planetary Romance: The sourcebook Revelations of Mars introduces themes from this genre. And even introduces a planet Mars that is very similar to John Carter of Mars.
• Point Build System: Char-gen operates on a point-buy basis. You get 15 points for Stats, then 15 points for Skills, both on a one-to-one exchange rate. Then either a Talent or a Resources (an equivalent of 15 experience points) and, in the end, 15 actual experience points to use whenever the player likes (so additional Stats, Skills or another Talent/Resource). Character progression from that moment on is about spending experience points to directly buy new and increase existing stuff.
• Poison Is Corrosive: The Secrets of the Surface World supplement mentions an Amazon rainforest wasp which has a sting with venom so caustic it causes 2nd degree burns.
• Power Creep: Both Secrets of the Surface World and Mysteries of the Hollow Earth introduced a variety of new game mechanics that are significantly stronger than those from the baseline ruleset. It is most noticeable with the Talents added in those expansions, as their benefits are squared, rather than linear at higher ranks. The most prominent examples are however certain skills:
  • Brawl became not just weaker, but almost completely redundant with the introduction of Martial Arts, especially since Martial Arts cover also things like boxing, savate or wrestling (the Greco-Roman kind). If that wasn't enough, Brawl's own specialties got reworked into an even more generic Bar Brawl style of fighting, which just doesn't cut it when compared.
  • In the base game, all sorts of Psychic Powers and magic are put under the Empathy skill, which is very poorly defined and essentially operates on the level of minor precognition and cold reading. Secrets of the Surface World gave psychic powers a separate, unique Talent, with a specialty-like slot, providing an outline for how to even use them in practice. Magic got its own, separate subchapter, too. As the result of all of this, Empathy is best used by Con Man and alike, completely robbing it of its original "magic-like" niche.
  • Inverted with Ride skill. In the baseline game, it's one of the most boring and uninspired skills, offering the "You can ride X" ability, with specialities to various real-life mounts. Mysteries of the Hollow Earth added a whole host of exotic creatures to mount, along with an overhaul of the rules and a bunch of useful Talents to pick, making Ride far more exciting and practical to have.
• Power Pincers: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. Giant scorpions, an aquatic scorpion-like animal called Pterygotus, and the giant crab.
• Pretender Diss: When listing pulp-related media for inspiration, the main rulebook lists both the 1937 and 1950 adaptation of King Solomon's Mines, omitting entirely the Cannon Films version from 1985. Ironically, the 1985 one, for all its faults, is the closest to the themes and general trappings of the game, while both of the classic adaptations are pretty straightforward adventure movies.
• Prove I Am Not Bluffing: The "Bold Defense" Talent in practice means making a bold face and make your enemies convinced you are in a way better position to fight them off than you really are. In mechanical terms, it uses your Charisma (and it takes 3 Charisma in a 1-5 scale to even buy this Talent) rather than Dexterity to calculate your Defense rating.
• Psychic Powers: They were introduced in Secrets of the Surface World, with the standard repertoire of mind-reading, light telekinesis, ESP, visions and making oneself invisible to affected individuals (without achieving actual invisibility). However, a character can only ever access one of such powers, and it has to be gained during character creation.
• Pulp Magazine: Source of aesthetics and the main idea behind the game and its setting.
• Punched Across the Room: The game deliberately doesn't differentiate between sources of damage. So as long as a punch qualifies for knockback and knockdown effects, it will apply them just like any other attack.
• Puppet King: Thule Society helped Adolf Hitler get into power with their money and contacts, with the goal of just using him as their charismatic, but ultimately powerless pawn to simply gain access to all of Germany's resources for their own plans. Much to their horror, he's gaining more and more autonomy, pushing the Society to the sidelines. But what's far worse for the inner cabal is the fact that he is still interested in the occult and the secrets of Atlantis, funding expeditions and research - just not for the Society.
• Raygun Gothic: 30s superscience is one of the basis for the more outlandish gear and plots going.
• Real Men Love Jesus
  • One of the example characters from the basic rulebook is a Christian Missionary, who embarks on a perilous journey into the unknown Hollow Earth solely to preach to the natives.
  • Members of the Ordo Spectare and Ordo Umbra are all deeply religious Catholic friars and nuns, while also being highly skilled field agents of the Church.
• Remote, Yet Vulnerable: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. When a shaman uses the Spirit Journey ritual their spiritual self leaves their body and travels through the spirit world. If their spirit spends too long away their body will waste away and die, stranding them there.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Averted. Their only advantage is lower pricetag than automatics, but as far as the comparison with other pistol goes, they aren't better in any regards. And just like every other pistol, they are completely outclassed by other firearms. In fact, they are somewhat worse than other guns - unless character is carrying an autoloader, they can only insert as many bullets during reload as their Dexterity (so up to 5), while a mag-fed gun will instantly replenish as many rounds as the mag holds in a single action.
• Ritual Magic: The most common, but also incredibly slow way of casting spells, making it virtually impossible to be used in combat. Any given ritual takes at least 30 seconds (which is 5 rounds) and can be interrupted at any moment. Of course, this can be used by the GM for dramatic effect, where stopping a ritual in the thick of the fight is the job for the party. Rituals allow to bypass or decrease the demand for offering blood to cast the spell, which makes them great when one can spare the time.
• Rock Monster: The Vrii (introduced in Revelations of Mars) are a playable version of this. But they are made up of crystals, not rocks.
• Saintly Church: Played with in the case of the Catholic Church and especially its relatively new Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office. You know, the Inquisition. They mean well, but their methods are a completely different story, and involve two secret agencies meddling all around the world. Unlike the typical portrayal of the Inquisition, they are the level-headed investigators maintaining peace around the world, rather than fanatical butchers doing it for kicks.
• Sawed-Off Shotgun: Any shotgun can be modified this way, shortening the range, but increasing the lethal damage dealt by +1^note Due to the way the Ubiquity system works, this is not about making the gun hit harder, but giving it far better handling in close quarters, and that's what makes it more lethal. The default rules provided a standard, double-barreled shotgun that got sawed-off. The resulting gun has only 10 feet of effective range, but anything caught in the blast will be badly injured at best, minced on average.
• Scary Scorpions: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth:
  • Giant scorpions are the size of a horse and have a paralyzing sting that can take down a Brontotherium.
  • The Pterygotus is a 6 foot long aquatic scorpion with large spiked claws and a flipper tail instead of a sting.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: An ancient, corrupt Atlantean featured in Frozen City of Terror.
• Seers: Both deep hypnosis and the final tier of Theurgy allows to peek into the future. The game actively invokes Not So Omniscient After All, where the vision has to be inprecise and/or cover things like locations and characters, but not events (thus making the life of a game master easier). Vagueness Is Coming is what the Foretell turns into when getting insufficient successes.
• Set Swords to "Stun":
  • A tier 1 Artifact from basic rules is a "stun pistol", dealing crapload of non-lethal damage and the description implied it's a Sonic Stunner.
  • Shotguns can be loaded with rock salt shells, which deal only one point of lethal damage, but converting everything else into non-lethal damage. Nobody said that getting stunned can't hurt like hell.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Zig-Zagged. Shotguns suffer no penalties, regardless of their range, making them the reliable gun in all circumstances and they pack a serious punch. They all however have default effective range of 25 - in a game where flintlock pistol has 50. If a character has a chance to properly aim, rather than blast outright, it is possible to effectively double the range of such a shot, as careful aiming will negate the penalty of using any gun at long (normal x2) range - and if the target will use that time to get closer, they will suffer extra damage from the aiming phase instead.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Shotguns come with variety of unique properties that make them some of the best weapons in the game, despite at first glance suffering from relatively short effective range.
  • Shotguns deal massive amounts of lethal damage on their own, and unlike other guns, they have no penalties within their effective range (pistols get a debuff at long range, while rifles are terrible at point-blank).
  • Combination of their damage and range means they render pistols entirely useless, being just plain better in every measurable way within the same range category.
  • Another handy effect of the large amount of damage shotguns deal is being easily qualified for knockback rules, since a weapon with 4 damage fixed to itself is likely to deal more damage than random Mook's Strength, sending them flying. All while suffering no penalties in point-blank range, thus making them excellent when dealing with wild animals, Beast Man or restless natives.
  • Even without weapon modification getting involved, shotguns can be loaded with different shells on the fly, such as slugs for even more damage and rock salt for a really painful, but highly effective stun. No other gun can do something like that.
  • Anything caught at point blank range is considered to be in the cone of fire rather than just a single target, resulting in One-Hit Polykill and making shotguns perfect for dealing with anything fighting in melee range. And at longer ranges, it is possible to attempt to pull a trick shot, by aiming between two close targets, but the scatter of the shot will hit them both. Who said a single round can't hit few targets?
  • Plus there are of course combination guns, which usually means a break-action shotgun with an extra, one-shot rifle, allowing to have the benefits of both rifles and shotguns in a single package, with pricetag as a sole limitation. They can even use interchangeably Rifle and Shotgun Specialisation for rolls.
• Shout-Out: Too many calls to pulp magazines and various Two-Fisted Tales works in just the basic rulebook to make a coherent, exhaustive list. Just the example characters alone include shout-outs to The Lost World, King Kong, Indiana Jones (or more specifically, Relic Hunter) Tintin (twice), The Mummy and even Ghostbusters.
• Show Some Leg: Captivate, a high-level Performance Talent, allows to completely dazzle a target that can be sexually attracted to the character. Done well enough, and they are enthralled instead of just distracted.
• Slaying Mantis: The Hollow Earth has giant mantises the size of a large horse. They will attack any creature up to their own size, lashing out with their forelegs at blinding speed.
• Sliding Scale of Turn Realism:
  • By default, the game operates under Round by Round, with each round covering 6 seconds.
  • Continuous Combat, an alternative way of handling combat, works as a middle-ground between Second by Second and Action by Action: time is flowing at a fixed rate, but all (regular) actions are instantly done and finished and performed as a continuous flow, rather than clearly separated rounds.
• Soft Glass: By default, the only way to harm oneself when trying to break glass is via Critical Failure - otherwise, the structural Defense of it is so low, it's nearly impossible to not break it with a single punch.
• Spell Book: Played with. Anything can be used to store the spell, including clay tablets or tattoos on one's body, as long as it can be "read". And using any "written" spell allows to either cast it directly, or, in the case of spells already memorised by the caster, grants a neat +2 bonus, since they have an actual manual for the spell they are normally reciting from memory. Even a character with no experience with magic can attempt to cast a spell, as long as they can "read" it.
• Square-Cube Law: How Size rating works in practice. Health gains a bonus from it, so bigger creatures and objects are far more resilient. At the same time, it also applies penalty to Defense, so a smaller target is far harder to hit.
• Statuesque Stunner: All of the Amazons are bigger, stronger and meaner than regular women. Or men, for that matter. They still however maintain lady-like mannerism and good looks, befitting a cliche straight from a pulp magazine.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. The Hermit will guide lost travelers to the edge of the Northern twilight region so they can return to the surface world. If after taking a few steps to the south they turn and look back, he will have mysteriously disappeared.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Panzerkampfkruppen are basically Nazi AT-STs (the mini walkers from Star Wars). And apparently they've figured out how to make their own jetpacks operational and deployable from zeppelins, even if they are still highly flammable and in short supply.
• Super Prototype: When designing new gear, it is possible to make it without any flaws and combine an entire slew of various useful benefits. However, as the list of positives extends, it will require far higher skill expertise in a few different fields, might drag out for months (even if applying downtime between sessions, this might not be enough) and bloat the material costs so much, it might simply not be worth it in the end - if not outright impossible to pull off. And trying to mass-produce those is doomed to fail, due to all the tinkering and hand-fitting required with each and every unit.
• Super Spit: Mysteries of the Hollow Earth supplement. Lizardman characters have poisonous saliva. They can learn the Venom Spitting skill, which allows them to spit their saliva up to 10 feet away.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Characters can hold their breath for a number of minutes equal to their Body rating. And you can't have less than 1, while typical characters have 2.
• Surplus Damage Bonus: Despite its simplicity, Ubiquity system offers few layers of it thanks to the effect of damage subrules:
  • Each subsequent attack on the same target steadily decreases its defences, making it easier and easier to land the hit and thus deal damage.
  • Receiving in a single hit more damage than the Stun rating will stun (duh!) for the next round. Receiving more than twice the Stun rating, and it will instead knock the target out cold, for a number of minutes equal to the still remaining value of extra damage. And all of this regardless if it was lethal or non-lethal damage^note But to deal twice the Stun rating, one would have to take damage potentially equal to or even exceeding Health, which automatically renders characters unconscious - the exception would be either total weaklings or giant beasts, due to having respectively low Stun rating, but regular Willpower or so much Health you can deal even 10 damage without killing them.
  • Receiving in a single hit more damage than Strength will cause knockback, five feet per damage beyond the value. Receiving more than twice the Strength will apply both knockback and knockdown, forcing the target to get up first. Keep in mind that this doesn't have to be a melee strike, so Mooks will be sent flying after being hit by guns, especially when it's burst fire. And more importantly: you can easily punch people off the ledges.
    • And both Stun and knockback synergise, so hitting things really hard can completely take them out of combat, without actually killing them.
  • The never-finished Perils of Mars expansion was supposed to include a Momentum-like system, to encourage more teamplay. If it worked like in 2d20, it would probably bank surplus damage as a bonus for rest of the party instead.
• Survivor Guilt:
  • One of the sample characters in the basic rulebook is a Lost Traveller, a man who by pure luck and chance became last man alive of his (pretty large) expedition. He's half-mad from guilt over the fact, as prior to the expedition, he was a complete nobody-drag-along and yet outlived all the experts and specialists.
  • Implied with Erich Reinhardt, the founder of the Fifth Column. He was the Sole Survivor of a massacre ordered by Thule Society. The combination of grief and realisation who exactly are those people made him start an inner ring to oppose the Society.
• Sword Cane: A favorite weapon of evil masterminds and the nobility, the sword portion was equivalent to a rapier.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Optional rules for Martial Arts (specifically, for kung fu) propose separate schools, where one beats the other, but is defeated by a third, and each of them offering some specific, if small, bonus and penalty. The near identical system was later used in All for One: Régime Diabolique for sword-fencing schools.
• Talent vs. Training: Both are at play in the same time: natural-born Stats and trained Skills provide equal value in Skill Rating on a 1:1 basis. Thus, a complete layman with high enough stats can still achieve the task at hand, while a weakling with sufficient training will use the expertise to get ahead anyway. However, by default, the game is tilted towards the Training side of the trope - untrained skills suffer a pretty big -2 Skill Rating penalty^note So it's -2 vs. +1 for spending just a single point in a related skill, making the gap much wider than it seems, while Specialised Skills can't be used at all without at least minimal training in a specific field. Those penalties and limitations can be overcome with certain Talents, but it is generally easier to simply rise the skill you need than to try to overcome a lack of training. To further contrast the difference, 5 in any given Stat provides an effective Skill Rating of just 0.5^note Rendering it virtually useless and requiring a roll, while 3 in any skill provides an effective Skill Rating of 2, allowing to automatically succeed in tasks with default difficulty, but that 5 Stat can turn into an effective Skill Rating of 3 with just a single point in a related Skill.
• Talking to the Dead: The entry spell for Necromancy. Unlike the rest of the school, this one is an unambiguously good power, and spirits always flock to all sorts of mediums just to have a chat with someone that can hear them and talk back.
• Tastes Like Chicken: In the Mysteries of the Hollow Earth supplement, Professor Trader's journal says that the dinosaur Compsognathus tastes "not unlike chicken".
• The Team Benefactor: One of the example characters from the core rulebook is a "dying moneyman", who propped up the whole expedition in the hopes of finding a cure for The Disease That Shall Not Be Named he has. Other than that, it is usually handled as a Resource, in three distinct flavours:
  • Non-Action Guy Allies, especially when they own as their own Resource a Rank in some organisation, are an invaluable aid for any given character and thus can provide stuff like extra funding for the next expedition or a rescue effort in a pinch.
  • Contacts are all sorts of people that will feed intel to a character, even if they aren't friends, for whatever stated reason. Mechanically speaking, getting information from a Contact provides a scenario-long bonus to a related field, rather than simple extra exposition. Contacts can also work as brokers, offering easy access to people they know, working like a discount Ally.
  • Players with at least two ranks of Wealth can invest it into their own or someone's else Resources, effectively applying Screw the Rules, I Have Money! and getting extra/better Resources for themseves or other players - including stuff like Allies and Followers, but also simply buying a Rank in some organisation. Crimefighting with Cash never was easier.
• Those Wacky Nazis: The "default" antagonists of the game and preferable punchbags when requiring some military goons to be beaten. Half of the pre-made official scenarios that came with the game are about fighting with Nazis over some artifact, racing against them to it or being blindsided by their sudden arrival. Even game mechanic examples usually involve beating some random Nazi trooper.
• Threatening Shark: One of the most dangerous predators in the seas of the Hollow Earth is the megalodon, a shark that's more than 100 feet long and weighs more than fifty tons. They feed on whales and plesiosaurs, but avoid attacking the kraken.
• Thrill Seeker: One of the character Flaws that can be selected during chargen. And even without the flaw, half of characters in any given party will easily qualify for this sort of behaviour. After all, why else would they venture into the Hollow Earth?
• Title Drop: The sample adventure in the main rulebook is titled "The Hollow Earth Expedition".
• Token Good Teammate: The Brotherhood of Men are this for Terra Arcanum, being a secret organisation within a secret organisation. Their agenda is pretty straightforward: to keep the secret of the Hollow Earth until humanity is ready for it. Compared with the backstabbing, bickering, power-hungry, inner fights of Terra Arcanum at large and their rather nefarious goals and means to achieve them, this makes the Brotherhood look like a group of saints in comparison, especially since their ultimate goal is benovelent, rather than selfish.
• Translator Microbes: Supplement Secrets of the Surface World. When the Atlantean language is spoken properly it can be understood by any sapient being that hears it as though it had been spoken in their native tongue. In other words, it's a language that translates itself.
• The Triads and the Tongs: The infamous Green Gang shows up as one of the societies described in Secrets of the Surface World, right at the peak of its power.
• Trick Arrow: Downplayed. There are few different arrowheads, but they are pretty standard: regular, poisonous, jagged, blunt or on fire.
• Troperiffic: The whole damn point of making the game was to riff constantly on various cliches and tropes associated with pulp fiction, while in the same time deliver a playable and engaging game.
• Two-Fisted Tales: The Game. The main idea behind creating HEX was to write a game with mechanics supporting fast, action-packed style of Two Fisted Tales and let people have their own adventures somewhere between The Lost World (1912) and Indiana Jones. Worked so well, even if the setting and its premise is ignored, the game can still easily maintain pulpy adventure feeling.
• Tyke Bomb: A non-villainous example. Ordo Umbra gets their candidates from Church-run orphanages, then trains them through their entire adolescence to be instruments of God. Except in this case, it means field agents capable of getting their hands dirty, rather than a new batch of priests out of a seminary.
• Universal Driver's License:
  • Drive skill cover a wide range of vehicles, from motorcycles, through buses and ending with tanks, with the logic that as long as it moves over ground and is engine-powered, you just need to get your hands on steering and make it go. And you can pick further specialisation in given type for making it even easier to operate them.
  • Subverted with Pilot skill, which demands specialisation in a given type of vehicles, but it covers even wider range of transport types, including things like submarines, hot-air balloons, drilling tanks and more. Each vehicle type demands buying a separate skill.
• Unstable Equilibrium:
  • Skill Synergy allows to use any other skill that could help with a given obstacle, as long as its Skill Rating is 4 or higher, for a significant +2 outcome (half the rating), with a soft cap of +10 from various other skills. In practical terms, it means characters with sufficiently broad specialisation^note Like an archaeologist with high Archeology, History and Religion when trying to figure out the nature of the ruins, or a hunter with high Sneaking, Hunting and Tracking effortlessly finding and getting small game despite being unarmed are going to get really good in their field, thanks to the passive bonus of their other expertise. It goes so far, starting with as many thematically connected skills as possible at a high enough rating is often far more viable than a very high, but also very narrow specialisation in a single skill.
  • Healing Hands cures 1 lethal or 2 non-lethal damage, regardless of how much time have passed since the harm was done. To even access the spell, the healer must sacrifice 1 point of non-lethal damage, and for 2 non-lethal damage gains a nice +4 Sorcery rating. And that sacrifice can be achieved even by something as trivial as letting blood from a pack mule or gathering it out of the carcass of a just slain predator. Do the math.
  • Two Style points is enough to increase the rank of a Talent for the duration of a scene. Having four Style points on a character per session is a pretty common situation. This allows to get some otherwise Cool, but Inefficient Talent to just the first rank and then whenever the situation calls for it, simply power it up with the Style points, as if it were at rank 3. Sure, it's temporary, but Style points are a dime a dozen.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: The game is fully playable to everyone, but the more one is familiar with the historical 30s and all sorts and kinds of pulp adventure media, the better the mileage and the more extra details are there to spot in the rulebooks and their example scenarios.
• Walking the Earth: Secrets of the Surface World supplement. The Wandering Hero archetype is a monk from China who wanders the Earth fighting against injustice and helping people.
• We ARE Struggling Together: All the major organisations in the setting have serious issues with this trope - and some of them even in an active, deliberate way:
  • Terra Arcanum is a very, very special organisation. Not only are the people in the bottom tier for the most part clueless pawns of the higher bidders, but said bidders - the Overseers - fight each other for power, recognition and secret knowledge. All for the ultimate goal of joining the Inner Circle and take a seat as one of the Masters and gain true knowledge... except that's impossible, for the Inner Circle is just few Atlanteans playing on humans and not only keeping the Hollow Earth a well-guarded secret, but the organisation dedicated to that is kept in a controlled inner struggle, where Overseers are let to believe they can ascend higher, just to keep them distracted. The Masters themselves are paranoid wrecks, spending more time hiding their locations and covering their tracks - usually against each other - than doing anything else.
  • Thule Society is a more straightforward example. The outer cabal has no clue that all the sorcery and occult are for real, but they are still very much interested in advancing in the ranks, one way or the other, for purely monetary benefits - much to the irritation of the occultists who started the organisation to further their own agenda using Social Climbers and disgruntled veterans of the former German Empire, who find themselves pushed out of their own organisation. Then Himmler, their protegee, founded Ahnenerbe, syphoning funds and resources away from the Thule Society, resulting in Interservice Rivalry because the Society was unable to take it over.
  • The rift within the Order of Prometheus, while subdued, still has an ideological clash between slow-and-steady Architects, who want to guide humanity to advance at its own pace, and more rash and power-hungry Technocrats, who consider the majority of the human race to be dumb yokels fit only to be ruled over by the brightest minds in the world. Unlike other secret organisations, the Order considers this more of a philosophical debate than an open conflict. Both sides are predominantly stroking their own egos, just in different ways.
• Weak, but Skilled: Talent "Calculated Attack" allows to use your Intelligence instead of any other stat normally required by specific skill, thus applying smarts to stuff like fencing or gunslinging. The Talent can easily transform any given egghead character into a highly-skilled combatant, especially due to how cost-efficient it is when compared to rising up Stats to comparable levels.
• Weakened by the Light: Supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. The Flaw of Albinism causes anyone who has it to take one point of non-lethal damage per hour they spend in direct sunlight.
• Weapon Specialization: Each skill has further specialisation, providing bonuses just to that field. In case of combat skills, that means specialisation in specific weapon type. For example, the general skill for Firearms can be fruther specialised in Archaic, Pistols, Rifles, Shotguns or Submachine Guns. Specialisations are cheaper than rising the skill itself, which makes them far more viable for narrow applications, but there is nothing really preventing players from increasing both the skill and the speciality. And due to the way how the game applies damage, specialisation can massively improve performanc of various weapons, allowing normally lackluster gear to shine in hands of specialists^note For example, pistols are normally very weak weapons, but in hands of a gunslinger they can be used for all kinds of trick shots and lethal attacks, befitting the pulp fiction theme of the game.
• Weather-Control Machine: In the city of Atlantis, the Vril-ya priests can use the Great Crystal to control the weather, including calling down lightning strikes.
• Weird Science: It's the 30s. The recent leaps in science and new discoveries made each day are further fuelled by all those Mad Scientists and their outlandish claims, along with fully functional prototypes. How weird things are? Piloting by default has a speciality in drilling machines. You know, those giant boretanks to get under the crust of Earth.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Numerous Talents are of dubious value, especially if they are labelled as unique and thus can only be picked during character creation. Some of the most egregious examples are:
  • Blunt Stike offers a bonus to knocking characters cold. It requires 4 (on 0-5 scale) in Melee skill to even get it. In a game where you can knock people out by simply punching them and requiring maybe third of the points to do so in a reliable fashion.
  • Climb, Jump, Run and Swim double character's climbing, jumping, running and swimming ratings. Those are some of the most useless substats in the whole game, and yet those are all unique Talents, so you can only pick one of them and only during character creation. If this wasn't bad enough, there is Swift (which is a non unique), adding +2 to Move, the main stats that the climbing, jumping etc are derived from. Swift by itself is mediocre, but it offers for the same price a bonus to all four and can be picked at any time.
  • Iron Jaw offers +1 Stun defense. And it has four ranks. It's about as useful as a formal, three-piece suit in a dense jungle.
  • Skill Aptitude offers +2 to Skill Rating of a selected skill. At lower skill values, it's completely unprofitable, since you can rise a skill from 0 to 2 at the same pricetag. At higher skill values, it's completely useless, as the skill will be already high enough by itself. Moreover, short for highly-specific situations, simply buying specialisation for given skill offers far more bang for the exact same amount of experience points.
• White Magic: Theurgy school of magic. It focuses on things like Healing Hands, protections and blessings.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The Frozen City of Terror scenario from Perils of the Surface World is half-in-half reference to At the Mountains of Madness and The Thing (1982), right down to recreating the most iconic moments and elements from both.
• Words Can Break My Bones: A character who knows the Atlantean language and has the Talent Atlantean Power Words can order opponents by using one word commands in Atlantean. If he has the Atlantean Commands Talent as well he can issue complex multi-word commands.
• Year Outside, Hour Inside: There is a time dilation effect inside the Hollow Earth that causes time to pass at a slower rate than in the surface world. Because of this, dinosaurs that became extinct on the surface millions of years ago still exist in the Hollow Earth.
• Zeppelins from Another World: While The Hindenburg catastrophe didn't happen in-universe (yet), the zeppelins are on the stage of their swan song anyway. Nothing however prevents players from procuring one and even the default, starting adventure is all about using and then maintaining one on the journey to the Hollow Earth via the North Pole shaft. Nazis are also still toying with their own designs, and few Flawed Prototypes show up in the scenarios provided in the expansions - including one fitted with an extra-flammable rocket engine, because all that hydrogen wasn't already dangerous enough.

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