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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:

Post-Campaign Update 21: The Voyage
10 days ago – Wed, Aug 26, 2026 at 10:16:59 AM

In which Chant officially says goodbye, and Alex talks about ships.

TL;DR: Books exist; are in motion around the world; fulfilment likely to start late Sept. Shipping charges 3rd Sept.

The Books

Mass production is complete.

I repeat: mass production is complete. 

All books and accessories have been printed, checked, and boxed up ready to start their journey across the ocean. Which ocean varies, but there’s definitely one involved. Goods for Australia and the Pacific, Europe, and the UK have been collected; goods bound for the USA are scheduled to be collected tomorrow.

Now. Books were not complete and ready for pickup on 1st August, as promised. A significant printing error with the slipcase meant another delay, but… well… it was pink. It looked great, and Alex and I are overjoyed to add it to our collection of weird misprints, but it didn’t look like a Hollows product.


Despite having to urgently reprint quite a lot of slipcases, we’re still basically on track: Alex is extremely good at planning, and therefore we’ve just used up our contingency time for most locations. 

I now officially hand over to Alex to tell you when you’ll get your books.

- Chant

Salutations,

This is the start of the exciting part… and by exciting I mean the singularly strangest and dullest part of the whole process. 

It’s exciting for me because after approximately 4 weeks of wild anxious oscillation about getting everything ONTO the boats; checking import paperwork, tariff codes and transport plans and working with our partners to plan fulfilment windows… now we sit patiently and wait for the giant ships to do their thing.

I know what you’re thinking: ‘But Alex, boats are slow, they don’t go faster if you email them every day for an update.’

You are correct, and so for now at least I am reduced to staring at a bunch of trackers ponderously moving about on a giant world map as the days tick by until we get everything to the warehouses. Perhaps I’ll take the time to build my own giant world map and carefully push tiny boats around with a big stick, like I'm in a WW2 bunker.



Like I said - the exciting part.

Due to the quirks of real world geography (possibly twisted by some ancient Hollow energy - ask Conclave agents to investigate) each boat will take different amounts of time to reach its destination.

Here’s the current timeline by location:

Australia/NZ/Asia-Pacific

Currently we expect our Australia warehouse to receive goods around mid to late September. It is likely that we will then move into fulfillment for Australia and Pacific Ocean Backers by the end of September. This will be our opportunity to learn a bit more about what types of packaging your orders will need, and how well it stands up to the large distances and heavy handling that can occur to get a parcel from Sydney to an apartment complex in Malaysia. Aetherworks are always fantastic at providing robust, safe parcels for our goods and we’ll take anything we learn from them to our other fulfillment partners.

UK, EU/Middle East

UK and EU ships are the next to arrive. Currently I have a timeline that shows the EU vessel arriving before the UK by about a week. Both in early to mid-October. 
Our freight partner’s timelines already account for standard issues and delays, but these ships are travelling the furthest, crossing the equator twice. So they’re the shipments most likely to be delayed by Autumn storms as they travel round the Cape and up the west coast of Africa, if we’re delayed by it is very much outside our ability to influence.

Despite a significant investment of creative energy by Grant, Chris and Chant, they are still prototyping the ‘Weather Dominator’. I have asked them to stop watching so many 1990’s Saturday morning cartoons.



Fulfillment for the UK and EU is scheduled with our Partners for the end of October. We are keeping a close eye on the EU to ensure it isn’t impacted by Essen Spiel, but at present we don’t anticipate this affecting our EU fulfillment team.

America, Canada, South Americas

The USA ship is the last to land in late October. We have so much Hollows travelling that it will be its own complete Container. While we’ve sent a few full Container loads before, we’ve never had a single game line take up this much space. It’s a very satisfying threshold to breach.
However, it does mean we’re sending everything all the way around the US to New York, before it hits Amtrak to Charleston, NC before the container is opened and the goods transfer to trucks to the warehouse.

USA fulfillment is the hardest to predict right now (because we’ve had plenty of experience of delays transferring into, between and off AMTRAK services.) But we’re working on the assumption that USA & Canada fulfillment will occur during November (hopefully the middle 2 weeks)

Addresses and Shipping Charges

The planned date for charging shipping is 3rd September. Shipping prices are tied to your address, so if you’re relocating to a new country or state soon please double check you have the right address in BackerKit.

Once we’ve charged for shipping, the final step will be to Lock Addresses. We try to do this as close to fulfillment as possible to reduce potential issues. For each location, we will email you in advance to let you know that goods are expected to arrive at the warehouse. Then you’ll get the standard BackerKit email with 48hrs to change or confirm your address before they lock and we pass them over to our partners.

Get in Contact

Thank you for supporting this project, folks - it’s been a fantastic undertaking to bring it to fruition, and we couldn’t do this without you. We’d love to see pictures of your parcels as they start to arrive - you can tag us on Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook, or pop links in the comments here. 
Or join our Discord server and chat to others about all things Hollows? 

As always, there’s a risk things will get dinged, damaged or lost in transit. If that happens to you, we want to put it right. If anything goes wrong with your parcel, get in touch with Jim or myself in the Customer Service mines by emailing [email protected].

Expect more communication in about 3 weeks when we have news from the Antipodes.

- Alex and the whole RRD fulfilment team

Post-Campaign Update 20: The Reins of Power Twist
about 2 months ago – Wed, Jul 08, 2026 at 06:40:01 AM

In which I hand over to Logistics Alex for the hard part.

THE BOOKS

Mass production rolls on. The printer has confirmed that they’ll be finished and ready for pickup at the end of July. Alex and I are having lengthy discussions with them about exactly how many pallets the books need to go on, and in what order they should be stacked, which makes everything feel satisfyingly/terrifyingly real.

They’ve even sent me some pictures to prove this is really happening. What a big pile of pages that is. And that’s just one spread. Imagine the volume of paper we’re using, here.

Also pictured: some dice, some packaging, and the inserts we’re packing with the special editions and slipcases so we didn’t have to put gross, ugly barcodes on the beautiful books. It’s the little things.

TIMELINE

REMAINS UNCHANGED!



Hollows VTT and Digital Tools

The contract is signed and the Foundry build is commencing this week. More info as it arrives.

HOLLOWS PODCAST

I said last month that this might expand. It’s definitely expanding (there are already 90 minutes of audio in the can, and the crew are not finished yet), we’re just trying to decide how much. 

Some of you already kindly sent questions in the comments on a previous update, but you’ve all had the PDFs for a while now, so I’m putting the call out again: if there are any questions you’d like designers Grant and Chris, or production and business guru Maz, to answer about Hollows, stick ‘em in the comments please.

HUNTERS, MEET ALEX; ALEX, HUNTERS

You’ve probably got one last update from me to confirm mass production’s finished, then it’s fully over to Logistics Alex to make sure your books reach you safely. Alex, in his own words:

  • Did you know that if you know the name of your cargo ship you can track it online for free like an old fashioned pirate?
  • Did you know that cardboard boxes come in bespoke and standard sizes, and if you ask really hard you get to decide what gets printed on them too?
  • Did you know that international freight companies are a complex interconnected web of symbiotic micro-organisms like Trill that inhabit the inner workings of cargo ships?

Only one of these is partly false.

Apparently I have developed a reputation for being obsessive about the exact geoposition of our cargo vessels, volumetric weight & cajoling stevedores. I am assured this makes me exactly the kind of person you want handling your sizable orders of elaborate, fancy Hollows books.

Currently i’m working with our Chinese printer and our UK freight forwarder to set up all the processes and paperwork needed to get books from the factory to your very doorstep (wherever in the world that happens to be!). Turns out there’s a lot of doorsteps, and they aren’t all conveniently located, so i’m going through a lot. Please be nice.

Chant is under the illusion that this switchover means this update will be the last purple, overwrought title you’ll have to read. Little does he know I’ve been playing Hollows for the past year and I’ve been storing up all my most weird titles just for this project. However, when it comes to getting books into your waiting hands, I’m a big fan of clarity, so you can expect plenty of helpful headings in the updates, like “WE HAVE CLEARED CUSTOMS” and “LOCKING EU ADDRESSES ON FRIDAY”. There will still be gags tho.

SHIPPING CHARGES

Right, that's enough out of Alex for now. This update's my show.

As I said in a previous update, we’re not going to actually charge shipping until the books reach our warehouses (or at least are on the right land mass). However, Alex has set it all up in Backerkit. Please take this opportunity to look at your order and see how much you’ll be paying for shipping. If you foresee any problems, from “I am being charged for shipping but I only ordered PDFs” to “I am emigrating in August and need to change my address”, this is the time to sort it. 

If you need to change your address, you can do that yourself in Backerkit. For any other problems please email [email protected] and Alex or our patient, friendly, helpful customer service person Jim will sort you out.

PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW

With that, I entrust you all to Alex’s capable hands. Thank you for your patience over the last two years, and it’s been a privilege making these books for you. I’ll be back occasionally to provide things like podcast drops and VTT updates, and in due course to talk about what’s next for Hollows. 

Au revoir,
Producer Chant


Post-Campaign Update 19: The Presses Grind Unstoppable
3 months ago – Wed, Jun 17, 2026 at 03:00:21 AM

In which mass production commences.

The Books

I approved all samples and files for mass production last week, and got confirmation that our account manager has passed the instruction to the factory. As you read this, presses should be rolling. As long as you’re reading it during approximately 9am to 5pm in China Standard Time. Otherwise, presses are cooling down after a long day of rolling.

Photos coming as and when I receive them. I really want a picture of a big, satisfying stack of pallets.

Timeline

This is unchanged from last month - fulfilment will start in September and be complete by the end of October, with folks in Australia/APAC and North America receiving your Hollows in the earlier part of that window and UK and Europe towards the end. 

There is always the possibility that ships take longer than planned, sit in port, or goods take longer than they should to go through customs. Or that a ship gets wedged in the Suez Canal and disrupts shipping worldwide. But as far as the factors under our control go, we’re on track. Any issues, and you'll hear Alex's keening wail from across the oceans (direct quote from Alex, there).

That also means Logistics Alex will be setting up all the shipping charges, and we’ll finally be charging you for shipping, in early September. If the charge fails the first time, Alex runs the process again every couple of weeks, so you’ll still get your books, just a week or two later than other people in the same region.


Hollows VTT and Digital Tools

Several people got in touch after the last update to offer their services as wiki experts and enthusiasts - which means that idea looks like it’s got legs. Focus is currently on fulfilling the books, but we (Maz and I) are noodling away at wiki plans when we have time. 

We’ve agreed the full scope of the contract with our Foundry development studio, and now we just need to make the thing. More on that next update, but the gears are turning. We’re still aiming to open up the VTT at the same time as the books’ release, with beta testing prior to that by any backers who’d like to get involved.

Hollows Podcast

Bet you thought I’d forgotten this?

Grant, Chris, and Maz are going to record this in June and July. We were planning a tight single episode, but it looks like it may expand - there’s a lot to say about Hollows, surprising nobody. If you follow us on social media, you may already know Naomi, our social media wretch. She’ll be editing the recording(s) and making them available to you.

Currently, I’d like to have at least one episode out in September, and if there are more, we’ll release them a couple of weeks apart during the autumn.

One Last Thing

Grant has written an entire Hollows megagame, which our team of skilled veteran GMs will run at GenCon. (Mostly Grant; he kindly let me in to snuffle around and do a few bits of writing around the edges.) There are still a few tickets left for both sessions (Friday 7pm, Saturday 2pm).

So if you’re at GenCon, you know what to do.

And that’s all for this month. There may not be an update next month: chances are printing will finish right at the end of July, so I’ll wait until August to (hopefully) tell you everything is proceeding to plan. As always, thank you for your patience.

- Chant

Post-Campaign Update 18: Production Continues
4 months ago – Thu, May 14, 2026 at 07:54:42 AM

In which we resort to a tl;dr

Right. Tl;dr - we’re waiting for additional materials and doing a second round of sampling. As a result, there is another delay. On the positive side, VTT plans are coming together. Please read on.

BOOKS AND SAMPLES

You saw the videos, they look fantastic. However, they weren’t perfect. Some of the foil was misaligned on the special edition, and most importantly the boxes for Wretched Domains and the component kit were slightly the wrong size. It’s only a few millimetres, but it matters: being able to easily take the Wretched Domains pamphlets out of the box is the difference between them, and the box, lasting you for years or starting to show wear and tear within a few weeks; having the component kit box fit neatly into the slipcase without excess space means it’s going to travel better, without things moving around and boxes bumping each other. And, unfortunately, we’ve not yet seen samples for the slipcase: the first version did not fit the contents correctly, and it’s had to be remade.

We’ve made another handful of fixes at the same time, like adding a couple of lines of text or extra detail to covers and boxes, and we’re (finally) correcting the stats for the pregenerated characters in the quickstart. Major thanks to Slappy in our Discord who not only identified the issue but figured out the reason for it. (We forgot to apply the stat penalties for the Weapons. Oops.)

The manufacturer has given us adjusted templates, we’ve sent the new design files, and I’ve reviewed the digital proofs. 

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS

At this point, I’m going to let a little frustration slip out. Sorry in advance. 

As you may be aware, we’ve had some issues with book materials already. Unfortunately the materials that our printer originally sent us were not right for this kind of book, and we’ve had to do a lot of work with them to get the right paper and coatings ordered in. Just before we locked pledges, we got a chunk more orders in. We’ve also revised how many copies we’re going to need for retail stores, based on how well some recent products have sold. In most cases, that’s great - we have fewer books sitting in warehouses. For the slipcase edition, the extra orders would have left us perilously short of copies. So we asked our manufacturer to increase our order of those.

This is not the frustrating thing. More orders is a good thing! 

The frustrating thing is that it turned out they’d only ordered enough of our paper to print exactly the quantities we originally estimated. Presumably with enough left over for a handful of misprints, but it’s been extremely difficult to get a clear answer from them. (What were they going to do if there was a serious print error? We simply don’t know. This is not how a big print run is supposed to work.). 

So not only do we have to wait three additional weeks for more paper to arrive before they can start the print run, it took way longer than it should have to find this out. 

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR DELIVERY

Since we’re waiting for paper anyway, we’re using that time to get a second round of samples sent to us, so we can check the fit of those boxes with the revisions we’ve requested. Also so we get to see the slipcase up close, because it wasn’t included in the first round.

Approving the samples neatly aligns with the time for the extra paper to arrive. This is us making the most of an existing delay.

Manufacturing takes fifty calendar days (7 weeks, if you’re counting) after sample approval. Shipping then takes 6-8 weeks. 

So, on our new schedule: we will be collecting the books from the printer in July. We should have them in our warehouses by September, which means we can’t fulfil until September-October, for most of the world. Australians, you’ll get your books in the early part of that window. UK and Europeans, your books’ journey takes the longest, so you’ll be towards the end.

If you’re counting, that’s a three month delay and an explanation that covers maybe six weeks of that (three weeks for paper, three weeks for messing around with design files etc.). That’s because our printer’s initial timeline was… just wrong. We - Maz and I specifically, not the faceless RRD entity - were annoyed about the paper; we are even more annoyed about this. 

This sucks. It sucks for us, and it sucks for you. Usually I’d say we’ll do everything we can to expedite the process but we already are, and it has not helped significantly. We will continue to do that: we’re pleased with the results on the books we’ve seen, thrilled with the component kit, and we’re sure that as a result of the work we are putting in with our manufacturer, you are going to get something beautiful at the end of it. But we’re frustrated at how challenging and slow this has been, and we know you will share that frustration.


There’s no strong closing statement to this part of the update. Apologies are wearing thin, but nonetheless we are sorry for the continued wait. We’re keeping things moving as much as we can, and we have absolute confidence that you will get your game: we are moving forward more slowly than we’d like, but we are still moving forward. If your financial situation has changed, or your patience is also worn too thin, we understand: please email [email protected] if you want to change your pledge or order at this stage.

HOLLOWS VTT & DIGITAL TOOLS

A couple of months ago now, many of you kindly filled in a survey to tell me about what sort of digital tools you wanted. The answer was Foundry, by quite a large margin - not unanimously, of course, but it emerged clearly as the preferred solution. 

So we’re making a Foundry module! It’s still in the very early stages, but we had a really exciting conversation last week with a Foundry studio and a Hollows fan who has already done a lot of work on a Hollows Foundry module, and things are looking promising. I’m not going to say more until contracts are signed, because that’s a really fast way to disappoint a lot of people, but that’s the plan.

We’re aiming for a release along with the physical books, but the studio also suggested we give you all beta access so you can play around with it and share your feedback. I’m happy they said it before I did: it’s a good sign we’re on the same page. We’re also hoping to make the community licence work with our VTT plans, so that if you choose, you’ll be able to release digital versions of your Hollows that work with the system we want to create. More on the community licence in a future update.

Foundry wasn’t the only VTT you wanted, and it’s not the only one we’re working on. We’ve been in discussions with Alchemy VTT for some time, trying to work out how it’ll deal with a game as feature-rich, in a VTT sense, as Hollows. We continue to do so, and if it works out, we’ll also make that available for free to everyone who pledged for VTT access.

In addition, we’ll have a set of free digital tools:
  • The glossary, which is basically the mechanical underpinnings of Hollows in spreadsheet form
  • Art assets you can use for other VTTs (shoutout to the person who said Owlbear Rodeo, my own personal favourite VTT)

We would also really like to make a Hollows wiki, for those who do not wish to spend their entertainment time in a spreadsheet (to each their own). For it to be worth doing, and for it to be something we can actually maintain, we’d need an elite cohort of editors. If you are a Hollows fan with wiki editing experience, and might like to be involved with editing and maintaining a Hollows wiki, or even just providing your opinions on what makes a good wiki, please let us know in the comments, by grabbing Chant on Discord (chantwrites_25926) or emailing admin@rrdgames. I may not get back to you immediately, due to the printing and Foundry module, but I will absolutely get back to you.

Alright then. Onwards!
- Chant


Intermission: Locking and Charging Orders
5 months ago – Thu, Apr 09, 2026 at 05:01:49 AM

The time has come.

Today, in fact. I’m going to push the big button in Backerkit that starts the process. That will prompt an email to each of you from Backerkit, informing you that your orders will be locked in 48 hours, and subsequently charged - so this is a good opportunity to check your card info is up to date in Backerkit. 

If the charge fails, you’ll get follow up emails from Backerkit advising you of what to do in response. Backerkit will also periodically try again to charge your cards - so if it doesn’t work first time, fear not: your order is safe and sound as long as your card’s been successfully charged before we start trying to ship out packages.

IMPORTANT: We’re not charging shipping fees at this moment in time. We have shipping costs, but the world is currently… turbulent (even more so than it has been for the last few years)... so while we need to lock orders and finalise our print quantities, we’ll charge shipping fees once the products are actually on the way to our warehouses. 

EVEN MORE IMPORTANT: Maz and I have just received the physical samples for everything except the Hollows slipcase. Once I hit send on this update, I’m going to tear into the massive cardboard box and start reviewing them! If I can find some decent light in this benighted dwelling, I might even do you an unboxing video.

- Chant