Hollows is a TTRPG by Rowan Rook & Deckard that is at a high level a game about going through dungeons to destroy a source of trauma with your own trauma before you become the very thing you swore to destroy. It’s a very fun to play system that its main draw to any player is the very smooth but dangerous combat that plays out like a board game.
The setting presented in the book is that of a crumbling empire slowly coming undone by its own greed and fixation on war. Loosely based on England if it kept conquering, they are now falling apart due to their own greed. They neatly have only 4 major factions: The Crown (The old money of the island who runs the military), The House (A noble house of the people that wrenched control of the government so it could be made into a democracy), The Temple (A new religion who believe that with hard work heaven can rise from the ground), and lastly The Conclave ( a paranoid and scattered group of occult practitioners who study and are singular in their riding of Hollows from the Isles). Each player is either part of a group or was most affected by that group.
What the players mainly do is go around the 4 islands that make up The Isles and venture into these pocket dimensions called Hollows. These Hollows are fueled by a greater supernatural force but overall it’s Created by disturbed people. Traumatized enough people create hollows in reality to be forced to live out their traumas over and over again. These aren’t isolated however and the terribleness that happens in these Hollows spills out into the real world in disruptive ways and so Hunters (the players) are sent in to kill them.
Hunters bare the same level of trauma and supernatural power but instead of it consuming them they managed to channel it through these Weapons. This allows them to enter into these Hollows to kill the Lord at its heart sustaining the entire abomination.
Hunters can have any two of the following weapons each with their own unique abilities and unlocks.
Armor
Book
Bludgeon
Knife
Spear
Staff
Sword
Pistol
Shotgun
Rifle
Each is partially sentient and has its own motivations but more importantly they represent how a Hunter might cope with their Trauma and so mechanically shows part of their character.
The gameplay loop of hollows is that the players go into a hollow and start fighting monsters. Each time the kill a mini-boss they get to temporarily unlock an ability on their character and the party as a whole gets to explore the various synergies that exist in their team. Then they fight the Lord, the big boss, and afterwords the hollow is destroyed and the players lose all but one of the abilities they gained, the remaining one becoming permanent. Letting them gain power over the corse of the campaign and build out more of a permanent build.
The GM is incentivized to kill the players since the players effortlessly come back from the dead while they are in a Hollow. The players suffer narrative and mechanical consequences but they can be mitigated. These give the GM the ability to force aspects of a players backstory to come out and attack the Party or even to enhance a mini-boss which is really cool.
For now that gives a good introduction of Hollows as a system. What I will be talking about next would be a greater explanation as to how I interpret the setting and then copy and pasting the ethos of the Weapons in here for easy reference. Later than that I will discuss my campaigns and the tools I use to make these Dungeons and the Entities (mini-bosses) that inhabit them.