Character Creation Challenge #17 Hollows

For context, this post is part of the #CharacterCreationChallenge happening throughout January 2026.

It was originally set up by Tardis Captain and challenges folks in the TTRPG sphere to create a character each day for 31 days.

There’s a big old FAQ section which goes into detail about it in the link.

31 Day Character Creation Challenge Image by Tardis Captain (2025)

Day 17: Hollows by Rowan, Rook and Decard

The game blurb: 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.

Another game on the list which I know very little about. I had a quick look through the QuickStart rules for TL:DR whilst it seems interesting — admittedly I am not a bit fan of combat focused/rogue lite inspired TTRPGs. I was never into Elden Ring or Shadow of the Colossus — big boss battles just never applied to me.

I will say the physical QuickStart copy of Hollows is really nice — with character sheets which have a perforated edge so you can pull them out easily. The artwork really shines in person too.

I know lots of folks has been quietly anticipating Hollows for the last year — I got a lot of questions about it when I was working the RRD booth at GenCon in the summer but admittedly, I am not sure if it’s a game for me.

That said, this challenge is helping me explore games I out of my comfort zone so let’s dive in.

I do acknowledge that I might be missing a lot of context for this character creation without reading up on the lore/setting.

I am also terrible at min maxing or knowing what abilities work well together. So just acknowledging my flaws in advance. Don’t shout at me.

‘Every Hunter is composed of their:

• Faction. The power bloc in the Isles they’re most aligned with.
• Origin. What they did and who they were before the Malignancies battened onto their soul.
• Seed. What they did, or what was done to them, to transform them into a Hunter.
• Birthplace. Which part of the Isles they come from, and which traditions and superstitions shaped them.
• Stats. The five core traits that govern a Hunter’s performance in the Hollow.
• Weapons. The two toxic ideologies, forged into blade and bullet, with which the Hunter carves their way through Hollows.
• Details. These include personal information like their name, appearance and gender, and gameplay details like the equipment and personal items they carry.’

Nice little summary — should be straightforward enough.

Step 1. First pick your faction, and with it your, Origin, and Seed.

The Isles are ruled (or perhaps fought over) by the four factions outlined in this book: the royalists of the Crown, the elected government of the House, the garden priests of the Temple and the secretive occultists of the Conclave. Your Hunter has a connection — usually not a strictly positive one — to one of these factions that has shaped their past and will influence their future.

I do like the layout in the core book, with some good use of margin art and sidebars. Efficient use of the white space (not all TTRPG core books pull it off). The factions’ grouping of themes and motifs on p. 9 is a good example. From a quick scan of each category, I am drawn to the House — it’s broad themes are:

• Crime, punishment, jail and policing.
• Money, contracts, laws and restrictions.
• Cities, ports, ruins and abandoned places.
• Industry, infrastructure, machinery and manufacture.
• Iron, copper, paper and salt.

There’s definitely something grimy and tangible about ports and infrastructure. Again, I get flashes of Duskvol from Blades here but also Spire.

After picking City for the faction, I had a look quickly at the related Origin and Seed suggestions and picked the following:

Origin: ‘Agent. Armed enforcers, guards and petty tyrants. Each member of Parliament is permitted by law to maintain a small militia company who protect their interests and enforce House regulations. As tensions in the Isles have mounted, the exact legal definition of a “small company” has been stretched to breaking point; while most bureaucrats might have an agent or two, senior ministers have been known to employ hundreds of guards to ensure their will is carried out. You were in the employ of the House and you enforced its edicts with blood.

• Roll with advantage during exploration when you: intimidate the little people, stand watch for hours on end, escalate a situation, and so on.

Ooo fun — originally a part of a bureaucrat’s employ enforcing their philosophy or agenda but under pressure due to being understaffed (perhaps). Some nice backstory tension to be hard there, morals vs duty etc.

Seed: ‘Criminal. You broke the law and got caught. When the Crown was the sole administrator of justice in the Isles, any nearby noble could pass sentence on an offender as they saw fit, and most of them favoured exile or death. The House generally prefers to keep criminals alive — outside of grievous offences such as murder, for which they are often executed — and puts them to work in terrible conditions in exchange for their room and board. You were caught, convicted and press-ganged into labour after:

• You (unintentionally, your lawyer proved) killed your best friend when you shoved them during an argument and they cracked their head open on the fireplace.
• Protesting against your working conditions, you sabotaged machinery in your workplace — and people got seriously hurt.
• They took your child away, and her foster parents reported you for breaking into their house.
• You put three men in the hospital after they hassled you in the street, but one of them was the County Minister’s son.’

I do like the idea of a child being taken away here as the detail. I have yet to really explore making a character who had a child or children as the main connection/motivation. This suggestion really makes me think of a parent who is struggling with their own vices/weaknesses as well as trying to be a good parent and role model in a very difficult time

Step 2. Assign starting values to your stats.

There are five statistics (hereafter called stats) that govern your performance in Hollows.

Strong: Physical fitness and power.

Hard: How difficult your character is to hurt, and how intimidating they are.

Quick: Speed, gracefulness and ability to get out of the way of attacks.

Sharp: Situational awareness, insight and accuracy.

Wise: How in-tune your character is with science, mysticism, and the ways of the Hollow.

No stat can be increased above 19. The human average is around 7 — but Hunters are more, and less, than human.

You start with values of 10, 10, 10, 8, 8 in your stats or, if you and your group prefer, you can choose a more specialised build with values of 11, 10, 10, 8, 7. You can assign each value to whichever stat you like.

Went on quick gut instinct for this using the standard array:

• Strong: 8
• Hard: 10
• Quick: 8
• Sharp: 10
• Wise: 10

I know already I have probably made bad choices — who doesn’t want to be the physically strongest or most deleterious in a boss battle haha. But I do wonder if I am actually making more of a support side character for this one (something which, again, I haven’t really done before on purpose).

Step 3. Select two Weapons, their Forms, and a Tier 1 ability for each. Note how they change your stats.

Weapons are the tools with which a Hunter carves up Entities and seals up Hollows. They’re intelligent, malevolent, pernicious, and corrosive to the soul. No Hunter can survive without them. Your Hunter has two.

Now this is exciting. Choosing of the weapons are effectively choosing your class or archetype and, by choosing two, we are effectively multi-classing.

We have 10 weapon options to choose from:

• The Armour
• The Bludgeon
• The Book
• The Knife
• The Pistol
• The Rifle
• The Shotgun
• The Spear
• The Staff
• The Sword

Purely based on vibes and the visual aesthetic: I am going to go for The Book and The Shotgun.

The Book: heal, support, control. Attacks from Close and Ranged with Wise. Boosts Wise and/or Sharp. Penalty to Strong.

The Shotgun: wade in and cause chaos (p. 58). Uses Loaded. Attacks from Close and Ranged with Sharp. Boosts Hard and/or Sharp. Penalty to Strong.

Feels like it should work right? Boosts to Sharp and penalties to Strong for both?

Copying both the Book and Shotgun sections down here for context. Have already noted which Tier 1 ability I have picked for both Weapons in advance to save copying more than necessary.

The Book

‘Words have power. If you name something, you can know it, and if you know it, you can control it. Speak a word aloud and the ground trembles at your approach; the beasts of the land recoil and cower; eyes are struck blind, muscles wither and crops die. A chain around the neck of the world, binding it to your will. Nothing is beyond your comprehension and nothing is outside of your reach.

The Book is the latest form of an ancient concept — knowledge, materialised, that can be shared or jealously hoarded. What is now paper and ink was once chiselled tablets of stone or rich pigment daubed across the walls of firelit caves. It sees the world not as a chaotic mess, but instead a series of rules which can be manipulated to its advantage.

The Book’s violence is more subtle than that of its companions in the Weapons’ bloodstained pantheon. Every Weapon is a tool through which humans impose their will upon the world, and where the others may do so directly with fire and iron, the Book holds itself above such base matters.

Violence is not only the crack of bone and tang of blood; pure violence, unsullied by the sweat and pain of the melee, is the subjugation of that which you deem to be beneath you. The Book knows that everything is beneath it.’

I love the fact I could have a Book as a weapon (that’s right up my alley). So great flavour text, especially the Lies and Fear sections.

Stat Changes

• Wise +1 Sharp +1

Or

• Wise +2

Or

• Sharp +2

AND

• Strong -1
• Resolve +3
• Wounds +4

Core Attack: Attack with Wise vs Wyrd from Close and Ranged.

Form

• ELDRITCH: When you Focus, the Entity suffers 1 Resolve damage. Also: Litanies of the Outer Dark, bag of astral runes, strange device. 1/1
• PROFANE: Also: Codex Malignatus, banned texts, impish familiar. 2/2
• SACRED: When you Guard, an ally may restore 1 Resolve. Also: illustrated family Viridian almanack, lost apocrypha, hallowed parchments 1/1

TIER 1

• REMAKE. Speak their bones back into their ordained form. Spend 1 Wound and a manoeuvre to activate this ability. Test Wise; on any success, an ally in your area heals 3 Wounds. On any failure, an ally in your area heals 1 Wound. If this action is performed in Support, roll with advantage.

I’m going to take Wise +2 making it 12 now. Strong is now 8. And I am going to pick ELDRITCH form as the starting one — I want to make sure I can do as much damage to enemies as possible without rolling (happy to spend resources or expend an action!).

The Shotgun

‘There are things out there that want to kill you — terrible things, wretched things, bestial things. You’re not scared of them. They should be scared of you. You’re mess and you’re chaos, you’re indiscriminate, you’re a massacre waiting to happen. There’s nothing you can’t kill, nothing you can’t break, nothing you can’t ruin.’

‘The Shotgun (or blunderbuss, or dragon, or scattergun, or coach gun) uses a sizeable charge to fire multiple projectiles at a target. On the upside, the spread of shot means that accuracy is no longer a concern — on the downside, the laborious process of loading the ammunition leaves the bearer vulnerable to attack once they’ve pulled the trigger. It is not a new or complicated concept.’

‘Whilst the Rifle and Pistol have made recent advances with regards to accuracy, capacity and rate of fire, the Shotgun has been perfectly happy to blast great clouds of debris downrange for centuries with very little change in its construction. It is easy to make, easy to use, and you can fire pretty much anything out of it and still make an impact. It is immediate and indiscriminate violence in physical form. It promises absolute destruction at the pull of a trigger: an attack without patience or restraint that sends even the fiercest foe reeling.’

I always pick a shotgun for a character’s weapon in video games where I can. I like the chaotic nature of them — doesn’t matter if you have a good aim, you are incredibly volatile and will do a lot of damage before being taken down. So going for the same vibes here.

Stat Changes

• Hard +1 Sharp +1

OR

• Hard +2

OR

• Sharp +2

AND

• Strong -1
• Resolve +3
• Wounds +4

Core Attack: Attack with Sharp from Ranged and Close.

Core Ability: LOADED. All or nothing. The Shotgun doesn’t have Capacity like other ranged Weapons. Instead, it is either Empty or Loaded. At the start of each fight, the Shotgun is Loaded: place the Shotgun token on your character sheet with the Loaded side up.

While it’s Loaded, you can make an attack by flipping it to Empty; while it’s Empty, you can make a Reload manoeuvre to flip it to Loaded. You can only make attacks with the Shotgun while it is Loaded.

You may only use the sections of your abilities matching the current state of your Weapon. In general, effects that restore Capacity also allow you to flip the Shotgun from Empty to Loaded.

Form

• LONG-BARREL: Roll with advantage when you attack from Ranged with the Shotgun. Also: hunting 12-gauge, breech loader. 2/2
• REPEATER: When you would flip the Shotgun to Empty, toss the Shotgun token like a coin. If it shows Loaded, it’s Loaded; if it shows Empty, it’s Empty. Also: pump-action, trench gun; 2/2
• SAWN-OFF: Roll with advantage when you attack from Close with the Shotgun. Also: scattergun, blunderbus. 2/2

TIER 1

• FRANTIC. Kill it! Kill it now! The first time each turn you miss with an attack, you suffer 1 Resolve damage and inflict 2 Resolve damage on the Entity.

Mmm…this time I am going to go for Sharp +2 (so 12!). Strong is now at 6 and we have now have 6 Resolve and 8 Wounds. And…let’s go for SAWN-OFF — leaning into that dangerous damage of being up close and personal.

Step 4. Choose one piece of Exploration Equipment and one piece of Battle Equipment to carry.

Your Weapons make you a Hunter, but you have other tools. In addition to the Weapons you wield, you can carry up to one piece of Exploration Equipment and one piece of Battle Equipment.

Narratively, you can carry all sorts of other things, but mechanically, you have two important items with significant game effects. Your Refuge begins with only those items you are already carrying unlocked; you can acquire others as the game progresses

Checking the list:

Exploration Equipment:

• Cloak. Sneak, hide, and stay warm.
• Crowbar. Break into buildings, move heavy items.
• Dowsing Kit. Navigate towards weirdness.
• Finery. Impress common folk and make a good first impression.
• Gin. Start a fire or start a party.
• Good Boots. Climb, walk, and kick in doors.
• Hammer and Nails. Board something up, or fashion a repair.
• Lantern. See things in dark places.
• Rope. Tie something or someone up, or climb safely.
• Spade. Dig holes, or smash something up.
• Telescope. See further and clearer than ever before.
• Tobacco. Pass the time or make a new friend.

Mmm — again going off gut — I going for Good boots (everyone looks great in good boots).

I suppose these are a bit more roleplay help than mechanical benefits.

Then we have:

Battle Equipment:

• Bomb. Use to make an attack with Sharp vs Ranged, inflicting 4/2 damage. All Hunters in Close suffer 2 Resolve damage.
• Extra Ammo. When a Weapon you are wielding reaches 0 Capacity or becomes Empty, restore it to full Capacity or Loaded as an immediate action.
• First Aid Satchel. While you are in Support, Use to heal 4 Wounds on yourself or an ally.
• Flare. Shift all Threat on the grid towards your area.
• Lure. Use to Reposition all Hunters either towards or away from the Entity.
• Mantrap. While you are in Close, when an Entity would make a manoeuvre, you may spend 2 Resolve as an immediate action to cancel that manoeuvre.
• Overcharged Round. Use to regain 1 Capacity or flip from Empty to Loaded. Your next attack with a Pistol, Rifle or Shotgun inflicts +1/+2 damage.
• Sacred Relic. Use to restore your Resolve to maximum.
• Shield. When a fight against an Entity begins, after your token has been placed on the grid but before any actions are taken, you gain 2 temporary Wounds (p. 126).
• Smoke Bomb. Use to grant all Hunters in your area a Sheltered terrain token. These tokens do not count towards the maximum number of tokens provided in the Entity description, and are not returned to the token pool if discarded.
• Vitriol. While you are in Close, when the Entity would restore Resolve, you may throw Vitriol as an immediate action; the Entity restores half the Resolve listed (rounded down).
• Weighted Net. While you are in Close, Use to remove 4 Threat tokens from anywhere on the grid.

Ahh it’s a choice between First Aid Satchel and Mantrap…I am going to go for First Aid Satchel. Always have some healing to hand.

Step 5. Choose a name and other finishing details.

NAME: Come up with a name (or more than one) for your character.

There’s a cool dartboard image with first names on p. 78 which uses numbers 1 to 20. So let’s roll.

• 10: Henrietta

Then we can just pick from the list of surnames on p. 79: Hoggard

CLASS: Choose which class you were born into

The only thing more pervasive than the rain in the Isles is class: an invisible, barely-referenced web of social obligations and expectations placed upon every single Islander from the moment of their birth

Just going to pick Middle class here: ‘who earn significantly more than the working classes or occupy a position of authority, but don’t inherit their wealth from relatives nor own much in the way of land. Most middle-class people are small business owners, Viridian clergyfolk, House officials or landlords.’

Again fits with the Origin and Seed from the City faction.

GENDER AND SEXUALITY: Choose a gender (or no gender, or multiple genders) for your character, their pronouns and, if you like, their choice of lover.

The Isles are surprisingly egalitarian with regards to gender, instead preferring to discriminate heavily on the grounds of class. A person’s perceived gender is much less important than, say, where they were born, what they do for a living, their standing in their community, where they went to school and whether they bet on the horses or the dogs at the weekend. But worth, value to society, achievement and respect in the Isles are often tied to traits that, in the real world, are considered masculine. The Isles are a place where masculinity and class have festered and become rotten: it’s up to you how and whether you decide to play into those themes.

Who you choose to take as your lover is entirely your own business; neither the Old Gods nor the Viridian Temple see gender as an important factor in the blessing of partnerships or in the morality of their congregants. Marriage is a way to announce commitment to another person and gain paperwork benefits if they are carted off to war or unexpectedly come to harm.

And while medical science has not yet evolved to a place where gender affirming care is straightforward, it is not uncommon for people to live as a gender other than the one they were assumed to have at birth; people in the Isles tend to assume people are people first and foremost, and as long as you’ll help dig the fields come harvest-time, everything else is detail.

Heck yeah! I am going to go for Any/All pronouns for Henrietta and, let’s say it is complicated in regards of a partner. The person Henrietta was involved in disappeared in mysterious circumstances (probably thanks to the City/House Henrietta belonged to).

ETHNICITY: Decide whether you are one of the majority, and where you call home.

I am actually going to leave Henrietta’s ethnicity as ambiguous for the moment. If I was playing a Hollows game, I would read up on the setting and look at where such a character would be best placed. Maybe depending on connections to other hunters we could come from the same region of the Isles or from beyond it.

DISABILITY: Decide what kind of body you have, and how it affects you.

This is a really cool section acknowledging disability in TTRPGs and normalising it as part of a grim fantasy setting. It’s rare to have good writing on this topic (the only other game I know has written about it recently in great detail is Daggerheart though I am sure other have done so as well)

I think I would like Henrietta to have a prosthetic leg to help aid her mobility.

HOPE: Describe what’s pushing you onward, despite everything.

Something very bad happened to you, but you decided not to give in. You persisted, against all sense and instinct, and clung to your brittle existence with both white-knuckled hands. You carry a spark of that dogged recalcitrance inside you still, and it propels you into Hollows and pushes a Weapon into your palm.

You have been marked by a Malignancy, too, whether you know it or not, and it sensed something it liked in you — something at the core of you, something primal that it wants more than anything.

Maybe you can harness those impulses before they turn toxic, and channel it into doing good. Maybe you’ve made your peace with the rot inside you. Maybe it’s more complicated than that.

I am choosing from the handy list provided here:

• Deepen your relationship with your Weapons and learn who they truly are.

By picking up this Hope — it should make me (the player) engage more in the setting and with what my weapons can do (again, something which I rarely do in other games).

CONNECTIONS: Create a connection to at least one other Hunter in your group.

Hunting parties don’t often happen by accident — and if they do, they don’t last. A good party is made up of interconnected individuals with shared histories who, on some level, have already spent enough time in each other’s company to decide they want to scour Hollows together until they all die for good.

Work out whether and how they know one another, what memories they share, and why they’ve decided to make a go of it together.

Another great list of suggestions here. My gut is:

• Siblings by blood, marriage or oath.

I like the idea of Henrietta has a step-sibling or half-sibling. More messy family drama (means another hunter might have a connection to Henrietta’s child).

APPEARANCE: Describe how you look to others, and what that means to you.

Ah! Well let’s make it official here from the list:

• You have a prosthetic body part (arm, leg, hand, nose, eye, etc).

WEAPONS’ APPEARANCE: A Hunter’s Weapons are unusual, riddled with black magic and torment as they are, and they show unmistakable signs of their past. The Origins section (starting on p. 11) and each individual Weapon entry have suggestions on how to personalise Weapons, but just to reiterate: be sure to make them weird and distinctive.

For the Book, I am going to pick ‘Painted or stained an unusual colour’ from the list. I like the idea that the cover of this book is raggy and ratty as heck BUT the inside pages are filled with gorgeous art with a bright green colour theme through.

For the Shotgun, my eye is drawn directly to ‘Filigreed and gorgeous, inlaid with precious stones and metals.’ Again, a sawn off shotgun isn’t necessarily an art object but I love the idea of a gun having a swirly gold pattern. I am sure I bought that skin in Red Dead Redemption.

PERSONAL POSSESSIONS: A Hunter’s personal possessions consist of those items important enough for them to carry around (or stash in their quarters, or the Refuge) but that don’t have a mechanical impact on the game.

Usually they indicate something about the Hunter’s history and outlook, but they might just be something that they like having around. There is no limit to the amount of stuff you can carry or collect, save your own time and the GM’s patience.

Just choosing from the list:

• Notebooks full of indecipherable observations.
• Bullet with your name on it.

I feel like these can work well with that Hope motive. A desperate parent trying to get his child back and turns to their Weapons for aid. Writes everything down in the hope they will find the key to unlock her full potential. And…perhaps a little bit of superstitiousness to his nature, given the bullet.

PASSING THE TIME: Describe what you do in idle moments.

Oo — some of these examples on p. 85 are nice! I might refer to these when I need other ‘activities’ or ‘hobbies’ for other characters in games. Taking:

• Collecting or writing ghost stories.

I like the idea Henrietta is collection these for his child as it is their favourite type of bedtime story. So when they finally are reunited, Henrietta can make up for lost time.

And…that’s my Hunter completed. Here’s the final character sheet.

Henrietta Hoggard (Any/All) Hunter Sheet for Hollows

I’ll be honest — I am not a big fan of this character sheet — it feels a little bit lacklustre and seems to be missing sections (there are other pages for reference and the group creation of The Refuge which are a lot nicer IMO). But it was fairly straightforward to put together a character despite not knowing anything about the setting. But hopefully this would be a good character to embrace the lore if I was to head into a setting.

If you enjoy my ramblings on this post (or any of these posts), feel free to drop a comment or share to other likeminded souls (or whatever it is people do on blogs these days).

Also — will plug the old Ko-Fi because heck why not. Any donation there goes straight back into buy more TTRPGs for me to read/run.

Cheers m’dears! See you next time for Land of Eem!

Fiona Howat is TTRPG Actual Play Performer, Podcaster, Improviser and Voiceover Artist. Find out more about her various projects here.