Latest from the Creator
PROJECT UPDATE
Chant (Hollows Producer)
CREATOR
12 days ago
Project Update: Post-Campaign Update 6: Storms and New Eras
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.
PROJECT UPDATE
Chant (Hollows Producer)
CREATOR
about 1 month ago
Project Update: Post-Campaign Update 5: Presidents, Kings, and other Wretchedness
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
PROJECT UPDATE
Chant (Hollows Producer)
CREATOR
2 months ago
Project Update: Post-Campaign Update 4: Islands and Art
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
Repeat Backer of Rowan, Rook and Decard
Previously backed this creator's crowdfunding project
Previously backed this creator's crowdfunding project
Gold Tier
This user is a top contributor to this community!
Not affiliated with RR&D in any way, but I put this together for my group to enjoy while waiting for the full rules release: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pwYL-qkGfHgR2jsmlGsjQG_GhLsL10v1DLUao1NftfM/edit?usp=drive_link I hope you enjoy it!
PROJECT UPDATE
Chant (Hollows Producer)
CREATOR
3 months ago
Project Update: Post-Campaign Update 3: DIY Hollows and New Words
Hello again!
How time flies when you’re making myriad self-contained worlds of amplified anguish and muted hope. The short version of this update is that we’re progressing nicely, and we’ve put some useful stuff on our website. The longer version is… well, the longer version is the rest of this update, I suppose.
Writing
Progress continues! Grant’s been thinking about Malignancies a lot over the last few weeks (I think he’s OK; I’m a little afraid to check). He’s been sketching out how Hunters perceive their effects on the real world, and the tendencies within each Malignancy’s Hollows.
By way of example, here’s what a Dominion Hollow looks and feels like:
Gaols bloom into sprawling dungeons, houses of government become nightmare warrens, and palaces rot away to show the blood and bones that built them. Armies march and murder across blasted plains and shattered cities. Legions of workers, faceless and nameless, tear themselves to pieces in service to their master.
Those in charge are physically larger than those who serve them, as they would be if represented in ancient art, and they bear oversized marks of office: great crowns, sceptres, robes, and staves, often tattered and always heavy. The ranks beneath them grow smaller, more shrivelled, and less distinctive as they descend in seniority. They take on bestial traits to denote their lower status, such as canine muzzles, a herbivore’s diet, or the wide-spaced eyes of a creature built to be prey.
Lords of Dominion (or their favoured lieutenants) often rely on manpower to move – they are picked up on palanquins, dragged onwards by cadres of devotees, or borne on the bent backs of broken men. Some might, similarly, eschew making direct attacks in favour of delegation, and rely on the blades of men-at-arms, the teeth of hunting hounds or distant batteries of cannon to get the job done.
Unlike their chaotic cousins, Hollows of Dominion tend towards order – or whatever twisted notion of order exists within the Lord’s shattered psyche. Night follows day, water flows downhill, and [a third one, not gravity-related] unless it would be beneficial for it to do otherwise. Right angles, grids and systems dominate.
Aberrant elements (such as intruding Hunters) are quickly identified and set upon so they can be destroyed or, perhaps worse, broken and reformed to serve the structures of power as another cog in the great machine.
Surveys
Surveys are still open! Please complete yours if you haven’t already. It will stop Backerkit sending you niggly little reminder emails. There’s no real rush, it just makes me feel better when I look at the behind-the-scenes Backerkit stats.
Print Your Own Hollows
We’ve built out the Hollows offering on our website since last we spoke. It now includes a very easy link to the free quickstart PDF (in case you’re one of the three people who backed Hollows who doesn’t already have it), plus a set of free print-and-play materials for home use.
Currently that means A4 and A3 copies of the tactical grid and all the tokens, plus form-fillable or printer-friendly (crucially not both in the same document) character sheets for the quickstart pregenerated characters. We’ll add blank character sheets once we finalise the design for them. I believe that if you download this pack now, you’ll get an email when we update it but don’t quote me on that.
Royal Blood
Now, it always feels a little tacky to mention one crowdfunder in another crowdfunder, but I think there’s a strong possibility that if you like Hollows, you’ll like this. Mana Project Studio (Seven Sinners, Nightfell) are crowdfunding an updated, beautified version of Grant’s 2016 tarot heist TTRPG, Royal Blood. We’re helping a little.
It’s rather lovely, and Mana Project are making an absolutely spectacular deck of tarot cards to go with the new edition. I strongly recommend following the project, if only to get a glimpse of the art.
That’s all for this month! I’m hoping we’ll be able to show you some layout and design progress next month, which will make for a more visually stimulating update.
Bye for now!
Producer Chant
