Hollows

Hollows is best for groups that want tactical fantasy combat to feel dangerous, positional, and emotionally ugly without turning into another D&D-like attrition ladder. It is strongest when the table wants many-vs-one boss fights, cooperative movement, weapons with a violent identity, and horror that follows the Hunters back out of the fight.

It is a weaker fit if your group wants clean heroic fantasy, broad sandbox freedom, or a finished physical line with all print fulfillment already behind it. As of August 9, 2026, final PDFs and preorders are available, but the latest public production updates still put physical fulfillment in the September-October 2026 window.

What the game is

Hollows is a standalone dark fantasy TTRPG from Rowan, Rook and Decard, designed by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor. The player characters are Hunters sent into Hollows: poisoned nightmare spaces formed around powerful, formerly human Entities and Lords. The pitch is explicit about its focus: tactical boss fights, dynamic positioning, teamwork, and horror rooted in other people's personal demons.

The game is not just a generic gothic skin for familiar fantasy adventuring. Hunters carry Weapons that embody humanity's worst instincts, fight monsters in intimate many-vs-one battlefields, and gain power by surviving entities that are bigger, stronger, and more monstrous than they are. The result sits somewhere between dark fantasy, tactical boss-rush play, and trauma-haunted horror.

Publication history and current status

RR&D began public playtest discussion for Hollows before the 2024 BackerKit campaign, and the campaign funded on June 28, 2024. The current BackerKit preorder page lists GBP 252,583 raised from 2,843 backers and sells the core book, quickstart softcover, scenario box, core PDF, scenario PDFs, and VTT access.

The most important current-status detail is timing. A December 2025 BackerKit update said the final PDFs for the core book, Wretched Domains, and The Sins of Grisham Priory were being released to backers. A July 8, 2026 update said mass production was rolling, the printer expected the books to be ready for pickup at the end of July, and the delivery timeline still showed freight in July-August with fulfillment in September-October. Treat Hollows as playable digitally now, but still verify print fulfillment before describing it as fully in hand at retail.

Product line and what you need to play

The practical starting path is the free or pay-what-you-want Hollows Quickstart: The Sins of Grisham Priory. RR&D describes it as trimmed-down rules with pregenerated Hunters and a complete Hollow, which makes it the best test of whether the table likes the combat loop before buying into the larger line.

For longer play, use the core book PDF or preorder the physical core book through BackerKit. The preorder store also lists Wretched Domains, a scenarios box set, plus individual PDF scenarios from Kieron Gillen, Chris Taylor, Jay Dragon, Minerva McJanda, Jinn Hermiston, David Morrison, Sasha Sienna and Helen Gould, Eleanor Hingley, and Samuel Mui. That support matters: Hollows is not just a single boss-fight demo anymore, even though the physical line is still moving through fulfillment.

Digital tools and VTT support

BackerKit currently lists Virtual Tabletop Access as a digital add-on, and the July 8, 2026 project update says the Foundry build contract was signed and work was commencing that week. That is useful evidence of planned platform support, but it should not be oversold as mature public automation until the final module is broadly available.

For now, online groups should expect to rely on PDFs, shared positioning aids, and whatever VTT access RR&D provides through the preorder/backer channel. The tactical grid is central enough that a shared visual space will help, even though the combat model is not a conventional dungeon map.

Core rules and play structure

RR&D presents Hollows around a simple d20 mechanic where actions can fail, succeed, or succeed brilliantly. Failure is not dead air; it exposes Hunters to greater risk and creates opportunities for other players to step in, support, and hold the line. The key table loop alternates between rules-light exploration of a poisoned Hollow and focused many-vs-one fights against Entities.

The positioning system is the game's signature tactical promise. Instead of treating the battlefield as a normal room full of many enemies, Hollows centers the fight on a dangerous Entity and asks Hunters to coordinate relative position, interrupts, openings, protection, and risk. That makes it a better fit for groups that want one monster to feel like a fight in itself rather than a sack of hit points surrounded by minions.

Characters and advancement

Character identity is built around Hunters and their Weapons. The official page emphasizes that the Weapon choices and attached abilities create hundreds of possible builds, and that Hunters select new abilities after kills before deciding what becomes permanent when they baptise themselves in the blood of a Hollow's Lord.

That gives advancement a deliberately violent rhythm. Progression is tied to what the group survives and what kind of power they are willing to internalize. It is not a cozy tactical skirmish game; the build system, horror premise, and death rules are all pointed at a table where becoming stronger should feel compromised.

Signature mechanics

• Many-vs-one tactical boss fights: fights are built around a single overwhelming Entity rather than a room of interchangeable enemies.
• Fail, succeed, or succeed brilliantly: the d20 roll structure keeps results legible while making failure produce pressure instead of simple nothing-happens turns.
• Weapon-centered builds: Weapons and their abilities define how Hunters fight, grow, and express the game's violent themes.
• Death as expected pressure: RR&D explicitly says death is expected and intended, slowing a Hunter down while offering a way to return stronger.
• Hollows as personal hells: scenario spaces are not generic lairs; they are rotten pocket realities formed around terrible people and their sins.

What play feels like

A strong Hollows session should feel like a boss fight that keeps changing shape. The players are not only waiting for their own turns; they are watching each other's positions, deciding when to interrupt, when to expose themselves, and how to keep one Hunter's mistake from becoming a collapse. That gives the game more team-fight energy than most gothic fantasy TTRPGs.

The exploration side is looser and more horror-forward. The party pushes through a poisoned space, learns what made it this way, and then has to confront the Entity at the center. The best sessions should make the fight feel like the culmination of the Hollow's moral and emotional rot, not just the combat encounter at the end of a corridor.

Running the game

The GM load is medium. Hollows is easy to pitch and has a clear combat focus, but the GM needs to make the Entity's space feel personal, stage the tactical fight cleanly, and maintain horror tone while the table is making highly mechanical movement choices. That is a narrower job than open-world fantasy prep, but not a trivial one.

The main pitfall is flattening the game into a board-game boss puzzle or, in the other direction, treating the tactical fight as ordinary narrative combat. Hollows appears strongest when the GM respects both halves: emotional nightmare logic during exploration and crisp positional pressure during the fight.

Campaign fit

Hollows can support one-shots because the quickstart gives a complete Hollow and pregenerated Hunters. It is also campaign-capable because the preorder line includes the core book, a scenario set, individual scenario PDFs, advancement through Weapons, and ongoing line-support signals from RR&D.

The best recommendation is to start with a one-shot or short arc. If the players enjoy the boss-fight grammar and the grim Weapon identity, move into campaign play. If they only like the premise but not the tactical loop, a longer campaign will probably magnify the mismatch.

Reception and community signals

Hollows has stronger preview and community evidence than mature retail-review volume. The BackerKit campaign's GBP 252,583 from 2,843 backers is the clearest demand signal. Blizzard Watch praised the way the quickstart aimed at dark tactical boss fights and called out both the Soulslike appeal and the need to handle trauma-focused material carefully. Birdmilk's RPG Cafe was especially enthusiastic about the boss-fight design after play.

The useful caution is that some early discussion raised concerns about whether the quickstart combat could become repetitive. That is exactly the kind of risk a finder page should name: Hollows is a high-concept tactical game, and its success depends on whether the final rules, scenario variety, and GM handling keep each Entity from feeling like the same fight in new art.

Where it is strongest

• Groups that want tactical combat to be the main event without using a standard D&D-like encounter model.
• Players who enjoy cooperative positioning, interrupts, protection, and boss reads.
• Tables that want dark fantasy horror with mechanical teeth rather than only atmosphere.
• Short arcs where each Hollow can be a memorable, morally loaded set piece.
• Groups choosing between RR&D's story-forward horror lineage and more tactical fantasy games.

Where it can frustrate groups

• You want broad travel, faction, downtime, or sandbox procedures to matter more than boss fights.
• You dislike tactical positioning or repeated many-vs-one combat as the core activity.
• You want low-intensity horror or heroic fantasy where power is cleanly empowering.
• You need mature retail-review volume before committing to a campaign.
• You want physical fulfillment to be fully complete before listing the game as available.

Content and safety notes

Expect body horror, trauma, violent transformation, personal hells, corrupted people, toxic power, death, blood ritual imagery, and weapons built from humanity's worst instincts. The premise asks players to enter other people's nightmares and destroy the monster at the center, so the table should align on trauma, masculinity, abuse, corruption, and gore before play.

This is not a game to pitch only as cool boss fights. The best version of Hollows needs a safety conversation because the emotional horror and the tactical violence are intertwined.

Best starting path

Start with The Sins of Grisham Priory quickstart and run it as a focused test of the combat loop. If the table likes that, move to the BackerKit preorder store for the core PDF or core book preorder, then add Wretched Domains when you want a wider scenario bench.

If your group is mostly interested in RR&D's darker worldbuilding but not tactical boss combat, compare Heart: The City Beneath and Spire: The City Must Fall before buying deeper into Hollows.

Research notes

Last checked: 2026-08-09.

• Rowan, Rook and Decard: Hollows game-system page
• Rowan, Rook and Decard: Hollows Quickstart: The Sins of Grisham Priory
• Rowan, Rook and Decard: Hollows print-at-home materials
• BackerKit: Hollows preorder store
• BackerKit update 14: final PDFs and print timeline
• BackerKit update 20: mass production, fulfillment timeline, and Foundry build
• Blizzard Watch preview
• Birdmilk's RPG Cafe review/play report
• Teilzeithelden review of the playtest version