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HOLLOWS - TTRPG Boss Fights Done Right

Created by Rowan, Rook and Decard

Plunge into the nightmare realms of Hollows and slay other people's personal demons. Hollows' unique tactical combat system allows for dynamic positioning and tactical gambits, and makes combat spectacular.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Intermission: Would You Like Some Hollows NOW?
2 days ago – Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 07:23:01 AM

Hello again!

First! Look what Sam's done with the map of the Isles!

My favourite parts are the broken bridge and, if you look closely enough, the dilapidated train lines. How the mighty empire has fallen.

As I may have mentioned before, we're creeping ever closer to release, with all that entails - editing, layout design and refinement, and so on. We at RRD have never been the types to do things the easy way. We take the road less-travelled. March to the beat of our own drum. Run a final playtest mere months before release.

(Producer Chant is fine about this, it doesn't mess up the spreadsheet at all and everything is great.)

Jokes aside, there's quite a bit of material in Hollows that only comes into play when you start running longer-term games. Players get to develop the Refuge, their Hunters' interdimensional pub/guest house; Hunters die, gain Corruption, and gain new boons and banes in the process; GMs develop storylines that run across multiple Hollows. The Refuge and Corruption are some of the most iterated upon parts of Hollows and, while we've had a good time with them, we'd like to open them up to wider feedback while there's still (just about) time to tweak them if we need to.

So, if you would like to be the first to see these unreleased chapters of Hollows, for the low, low price of giving us some feedback, please sign up using the form linked below. We'll send out a packet of rules and other content in the first week of March, and try to squeeze in a couple of months of testing while we're laying out the rest of the book, getting sensitivity reading done, etc.

https://forms.gle/qrtnivQi76dC3qeQA 

Thanks folks!
Chant


Post-Campaign Update 7: Prognostication and Midwinter
9 days ago – Wed, Feb 12, 2025 at 09:34:12 AM

Apologies, Islanders - I managed to miss January's update. It would have been a brief one anyway, I admit. So is this month's update - a lot is happening behind the scenes, to be unveiled over the next couple of months.

TIMELINE

Remarkably, things are looking... OK? Good, even? No news is good news, under this heading.

THE BOOK

Hollows is still in editing - and that's normal. There's a lot of book, ergo there's a lot of editing. This very afternoon, I've had a delightful meeting with Mina (McJanda; art director and layout maven) about page design, paper weights, and ribbon - so we've done a lot of good groundwork ahead of starting layout.

WRETCHED DOMAINS

Last update, writing was nearly complete; now it is complete. It's nice when a plan comes together. Art is still trickling in, but that's almost complete too. Behold, for example, Letty Wilson's stunningly unpleasant sketches for Chris Taylor's fairytale Hollow.


That lupine thing is called The Worst Wolf. It's the manifestation of every wolf in every story. Every child's nightmare, now bound in service to a teacher whose personal hell is the power of children's imagination.

That brings us to the end of a short but gruesome update. More soon. 

- Chant

Post-Campaign Update 6: Storms and New Eras
3 months ago – Fri, Dec 06, 2024 at 08:20:35 AM

Hello backers! 

This is the final update of 2024, and headline: everything’s going roughly to plan. 

TIMELINES

Last month I said there was potential for the project timelines to slip. There still is, but at the moment estimates are holding up: we should start shipping books out in Q3 of next year. Now, I think it will be later in Q3 than I would have ideally liked, but still Q3. Watch this space. 

THE BOOK

We’re still not 100% finished but the outstanding bits are: 
  • Revising the Steel City and Morningmire scenarios you might remember from the original playtest, to match the new updated rules and some setting developments
  • GM advice on how to beat up your players’ Hunters and make them enjoy it
  • The small but important bits of front matter like “what is a roleplaying game?” and “what is this roleplaying game?”

I hope you’ll agree that isn’t much, in the greater scheme of things. 

Our own Maz Hamilton is going to start the first editing pass in the next week or two. This is both exciting and terrifying. Maz is one of the best editors I’ve ever worked with, and what they do to the manuscript will make it several times better (and it’s already bloody good), but it’s also going to ask some difficult questions and force Grant and Chris to answer them, because that’s what a good edit does. We’re fine, though. I mean, I’m smoking a lot, but that’s OK, right?

WRETCHED DOMAINS

We have eight complete Hollows, and the author is working on the ninth one in our virtual office co-working space as I type. This collection's looking good, folks. And the art! Oh my goodness, the art! This month, I’ll send you off with these absolutely revolting works by Morgan Robles, for Sasha Sienna and Helen Gould’s Hollow. This was formerly called The Lord of the Dockyard and is currently Break! Break! Break! – the story of a mutineer who Hollowed when his uprising failed and he proved powerless against the navy that crushed his spirit. 

Bleak, right? And Morgan’s art brings it to life perfectly. 


That’s it for this month, for 2024, and damn nearly for the writing stage of this game. 

I hope your year ends peacefully and the new one starts strong. 

Chant out.

Post-Campaign Update 5: Presidents, Kings, and other Wretchedness
4 months ago – Wed, Nov 06, 2024 at 10:07:30 AM

Hello backers! 

This month’s update is rich with new material, but also we’ve got to talk about politics a bit. We’ll do that first and get it out of the way. 

US ELECTION, EH? 

Originally there was going to be a somewhat tongue-in-cheek statement here about how the election results might impact international trade. Now the results are in but it's too soon to really know the effect on tariffs etc.. so we know there will likely be some impact, but not what form it will take.

In other words, we’re not quite ready to announce delays to Hollows but that might change between now and the next monthly update.

How cryptic. 

RIGHT, BOOK!

Grant has written even more setting, and given that he’s moved on to writing campaign frames for long-term Hollows play I think he might be finished. The rotten cherry on the mouldering cake of The Isles’ setting is this description of its current monarch: 

KING EOTEN - A pockmarked, decrepit giant of a man doing his best to drink himself to death before the Isles falls to a foreign power. Father of six awful progeny, half of whom are poised to claim the throne with appropriate timing, forgery, assassination or social pressure. In his sober moments, Eoten laments the loss of the empire and the slow destruction of his country; otherwise he sleeps fitfully, or shambles about Allhallow Castle in a dressing gown, or tries to have sex with one of his sisters. If he were to turn Hollow, the ramifications on the Isles would be tremendous; those in the know believe it’s simply a matter of time before the spiritual heart of the Isles falls to ruin.

The fish rots from the head, as they say. 

We’ve now completed all the rules and all the setting, which is basically the bones of the book and the meat on top. We’ve got a few bits of gristle and sinew to attach, and some organs we still haven’t found a home for, but we’re bloody close to finished – which is exactly where we expected to be, but we’re still proud.

WRETCHED DOMAINS

Or, formerly, “the box of Hollows scenarios.” Manuscripts are flooding in faster than Chant, then Grant, can review them – along with art for them. Every Wretched Domain is a separate pamphlet, and has a very distinct visual style to reflect the unique ugliness of the Hollow it describes. Very rarely, as a producer, do I get to work on something that ranges from the gothic grandeur of Felix Klaer (superstarfighter)’s illustrations…


…to the bleakness of Daniel Vega’s Professor Armageddon for Kieron Gillen’s endless war. 


It’s a rare treat, but Hollows is a rare beast.

LOST IN A FOREST

There’s one more piece of Wretched Domains news. One of our authors, Cassandra Khaw, won’t be able to complete their contribution in time for inclusion in Wretched Domains. The Hollow isn’t cancelled, just postponed. If Cassandra’s able to deliver it, we’ll release it in some form. We’ll make sure backers who purchased the box of Hollows at least get a digital version.

Fortunately, we’re surrounded by talented TTRPG designers, all of whom are poised to make Hollows weird in entirely new ways. We’ve therefore drafted in RRD staffer Jinn Hermiston to answer the question “what if an entire forest could hold a grudge?”

Nobody writes rural horror like Jinn, and that’s probably quite a good thing. 

In the next couple of days, we’ll be removing Cassandra’s Hollow from pledge manager and putting Jinn’s up for pre-order. We’re sorry for any disappointment, but also absolutely shaken by what Jinn’s delivered, which is to say they’ve hit the brief perfectly. 10/10 unpleasantness.

OUTRO

Time to play us out with Sam Lamont’s bold experiment for the map of The Isles: 


That’ll do for now, I think. Stay safe out there. 
- Chant


Post-Campaign Update 4: Islands and Art
5 months ago – Mon, Oct 07, 2024 at 01:02:19 PM

Hello backers! 

We’re ushering in October with planchettes, wolves, sinking islands, and… pigs, which despite not being a stereotypically Halloween-y beast are great animals, and we should talk about them more often.

Writing

Grant has, under some duress, been writing things down about The Isles, as in the world outside of Hollows. The place where your Hunters come from, and the locations and society that shaped every single Lord of a Hollow. So, even though you’ll spend comparatively little time in the real world during a Hollows game, we feel it’s useful to put some of this information in the book. 

We’re keeping it quite light: the aim is to give players and GMs enough material to get a feel for the place; a foundation to build character-specific detail on top of. 

Here’s a sample for Forland (which means pig land), one of The Isles’ four islands: 

Forland, located in the west, is the largest island of the four that make up the greater alliance. The warmer climate in the south and good soil mean that it’s easy to grow things here - compared to the rest of the country, at least - and as such the Viridian Temple has made great inroads towards taking it over. Much of Forland was reclaimed from the ocean with ingenious drainage methods, but the collapse of the Empire and subsequent loss of skills means hundreds of square miles of landmass return to the sea each year.

SLANG AND APHORISMS
“Get your hands in the dirt” - Stop complaining and do some work
“Like a pig in a church” - Causing chaos (affectionate)
“She’s got a headful of bees” - she’s clever/organised/diligent
“It’s all compost” - no effort is wasted, there’s something to be gained from losses

PEOPLE
The stereotypical Forlander is portrayed as curious, distracted and gently weird. The ingrained folk traditions of Forland run deep, and the Viridians have done their best to syncretise them with their agricultural faith, though some Old Faith beliefs and practices survive to this day despite attempts to subsume or destroy them. Citizens favour multiple, haphazard layers of clothing - often wearing more than one coat in colder months - and wide-brimmed hats, though upper-class Forlanders take a great deal of pride in wearing the smallest-brimmed hats available. (Wide brims are for the working class, who must work outside; civilised folk have no need to keep the sun out of their eyes.)

The full write-up also includes numerous locations – including Farrow, seat of the Viridian Temple – but we’ve got to leave something for the book.

Wretched Domains

Or, as it was previously described, the box of Hollows scenarios. This is progressing beautifully. Most of the drafts are in, artists have been briefed, and we’re starting to get sketches. 

Watching an artist take a writer’s idea and breathe life into it is one of my personal favourite parts of production. It’s a part where I get to sit back and applaud other people’s talent, which is always fun… but it’s also the part where a scenario starts to feel real. 

Look, for example, what Johan Nohr has done with Jay Dragon’s map for Jay’s scenario: 


Or how some back-and-forth between artist and writer evolved this big furry friend: 

Johan has expressly requested I remind you all that these are initial sketches – they’re far from the finished artwork. I can’t help that Johan’s sketches have so much energy and punch I couldn’t resist showing them. 

Components

We keep being very nearly finished with the designs for the component kit, then we fiddle with them some more. This month, we’ve been finessing the Capacity tokens that firearm users will need. We’ve restyled them from bullet-shaped tokens with tally marks on them – which were fine, but were pretty chunky and we didn’t love how they looked in painted wood – into a cross-section of a revolver’s chamber which you can load with pegs to represent your ammo. 

As always, Sam Lamont has knocked it out of the park and most of the way to orbit: 


We’ve also restyled the Doom tracker as a planchette, in keeping with the spiritualism that shapes incursions into a Hollow. We haven’t picked a design yet (there’s not a bad one in the bunch) but we’re leaning towards Tree. What do you think?


Like Johan’s art above, these are just sketches, not finalised designs. But they’re close… 

That’ll do for this month, I think. Draw your curtains, light some candles, and stay safe until the next time we speak. 

– Producer Chant