Hollows TTRPG: How would ST Forge run it?
Good morning storytellers! Rob Wieland is back to talk about a game on crowdfunding that adapts one of the most popular genres in video games these days. Hollows sends players as monster hunters who are sent into nightmare realms over and over again to put down the creatures that created the terrible places in the first place through dynamic boss battles that encourage movement, tactical thinking and teamwork.
YOU DIED
Hollows is currently raising money to bring these books to life in Q3 of 2025 - Image by Rowan, Rook and Decard
One of the biggest complaints lobbed at Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons is that the combat felt like a video game. Players felt restricted to using character powers and abilities rather than clever narrative choices to circumvent or speed up battles. D&D allows players to try anything because standing around grinding down a dragon's hit points can get boring very quickly. Plus, narratively most epic battles don’t work this way. Heroes are always looking for exploits, weaknesses and bits of lore to defeat the big bad without just hitting them over and over again.
Let me push back on this criticism a bit. Fourth Edition felt like a video game for Dungeons & Dragons. Other editions often left wild player plans up to the arbitrary judgment of the Dungeon Master. Fourth Edition battles could still be dynamic if the Dungeon Master made sure that the battle grid had other things to do. It also really sang when players figured out combinations of powers that worked well together. Players who figured out how to work the battle grid enjoyed that edition of D&D more as did ones who understood the team power concept from MMOs like World of Warcraft.
Hollows, from Rowan, Rook and Decard, is a tabletop role playing game that takes its inspiration from the soulsbourne style of video games. The name is a portmanteau of two of the most influential types of this game: Dark Souls and Bloodborne. Modern examples include Jedi: Fallen Order, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring. These games focus on dynamic boss battles where players die over and over in the pursuit of figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of the monster at hand. Truth be told, I am terrible at these games, but applying the concepts behind them to tabletop games fascinates me.
Players in Hollows are Hunters in a brooding world inspired by 19th century England. They get called in when a Hollow is created by someone that’s awakened as an Entity due to combination or negative emotion and strange magic. Hunters are the only ones who can survive going into a Hollow without being warped by the magic and its their job to kill the creature at the center of it to return everyone and everything sucked back inside to normal.
Nightmares Fighting Nightmares
The battles versus the Entity are played out in a zone based combat where the Entity is in the center of the zone. Rather than a static map, the main monster is target locked in the center and the players move and are moved around to positions relative to the main creature. This keeps the big battle focused on the monster and cuts down on wasted turns where players can;t get into the right position. To balance out the multiple actions the players get versus the big boss, the Boss gains points of Threat which can be used to cause problems for the players like extra attacks, shifts in the battlefield or pulling a player into a more vulnerable zone like right in front of the monster’s mouth. Threat keeps the battlefield moving and the players paying attention een when it’s not their turn. The battlefield can be vastly different the next time they get a move.
Hollows also mirrors these games in the exploration aspect of the game. The Hollow is filled with locations that reflect the monster’s psyche which allow players to explore and try to discover weaknesses they can use in the end battle. Each Hollow is a tiny Silent Hill dominion of surreal horror that gives players a chance to investigate, battle smaller monsters and figure out why the Entity was transformed in the first place. Players rack up Lore points which they spend on ways to depower the monster in ways they get to define narratively. The monster is vulnerable to your attacks? Maybe you found some silver bullets for your gun or a family prayer that causes it pain to hear. There’s also some risk versus reward here; linger too long in the Hollow and the GM gets to move the creature along a Doom track giving it more time to prepare for the Hunters final assault.
Hunters get to take two weapons into each Hollow. Make them count. - Image by Rowan, Rook and Decard
Big Budget Boss Battles
The main takeaway for me from looking at the Hollows is giving more time to think about boss battles as a set piece. Set pieces is a movie term for a big action scene. Think of the truck chase in Raiders of the Lost Ark or the attack on the War Rig in Mad Max: Fury Road. The dragon’s lair isn’t an empty warehouse. You’ve got an unlimited VFX budget; think about what else the monster can do besides attack the players. Can the dragon swat a pile of gold at your players to blind them or make them more vulnerable. Can the players jump into a treasure pile, Scrooge McDuck style, and come out with a cool item they can use to turn the tide against the dragon?
The next time you’ve got a big boss battle coming up, think about adding three features to the location. One should be something that the bad guy can use, one should be something the players can discover and one should be something that either side can use so long as they hold it. Once you’ve decided on what these things are and what they do, think about what needs to happen for the feature to either be neutralized or controlled by the other side. Thinking about a battlefield as a dynamic place will go a long way to make boss fights feel like climatic endings to that chapter of your game.
What’s your favorite video game boss battle? Have you ever borrowed ideas from your favorite game? Tell us what your favrotie soulsbourne style games are in the comments!
Rob Wieland is an author, game designer and professional nerd. You can find him on X and Bluesky @robowieland and on YouTube as the host of Theatre Of The Mind Players, the Actual Play show that plays everything besides Dungeons & Dragons!
