HOLLOWS: CURSE

Full disclosure: the Summer of Hollows wasn't all it promised. Thanks to a cocktail of business and mental health challenges, we have not made the dramatic - indeed, total - progress on the book that we'd hoped to make. I'm going to restart one-page games soon, so this is the last Hollows update I'll be posting on my Patreon. You can keep abreast of developments in the game by signing up to our mailing list here.

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Hello all. Despite launching Eat the Reich to Kickstarter backers, we’ve been hard at work on Hollows - in particular we’ve been focusing on the Quickstart. Now the game’s been in public playtest for almost a year (!) we’ve made a lot of changes, and soon we’re going to retire the playtest document as it no longer reflects the play experience accurately.

Coming soon (by which I mean: next year) we’ll have the Quickstart instead, which is a much tighter version of the rules you’ve read in the playtest doc. We’ve trimmed away all the extraneous campaign-focused bits, pre-generated the characters, and provide a single short Hollow for players to explore and get marmalised inside.

It’s all rather exciting, really, watching it come together. We’ve had some incredible art come through already, we tested out the scenario at GenCon earlier this year, and all told we’re buzzed to get it out there. But: PATIENCE.

So enough about that. Instead I’m going to write about Entities.

CURSE

Curse is an odd fruit. Curse began as a sort of sticking-plaster arrangement to satisfy the fictional concerns in the Forge Mother fight within Steel City; my first idea was to simply fill all of one kind of terrain with horrid imps that try to kill you, but Chris suggested that we split it out to a new type of terrain all on its own. We ended up with Cursed Terrain: a terrain tag that you don’t want to get, because it only makes things worse.

Unfortunately, because it was terrain, it didn’t quite behave correctly. We had to insert a bunch of caveats around acquiring it and losing it, because if we didn’t you could just wander off whenever something bad happened. It did the job, but like one of those OK-GO fantastical Machines That Make You Breakfast, it had a lot of back-and-forth to not achieve very much.

So: we’ve made Curse its own thing. Officially, you represent it with Curse Tokens, which (we hope) will be cute little D6s with skulls on ‘em, and you can tick them up or down depending on how Curse is distributed in any particular fight. And on that subject, in today’s missive I’m going to talk about the different ways that Curse can be used now that we’ve liberated it from the tyranny of physical space:

ON HUNTERS

Firstly, you can stick Curse on Hunters. Instead of sitting underneath their token like a terrain tag, it goes right on their character sheet, because the grid has enough stuff on it as it is. This is the most by-the-numbers use of Curse; the Entity does something to one Hunter that makes their lives harder, but it doesn’t affect the others. The Tailor, a sort of biomechanical textiles factory come to life, uses Curse:

Interrupt/s

Bound for Death. Cost 1 Threat. Target 1 Hunter with Curse tokens. Shift target towards the Entity.

Pierce. Cost 1 Threat. Target 1 Hunter in any area. TN6 1/2 vs Hard. If this attack inflicts damage, place a Curse on the target.

Special

Crimson Threads. When a Hunter makes an attack, they must mark 1 Resolve for each Curse on them. As a Use action, make a Strength check; on a success, remove all Curse from a Hunter in your area. On a failure, remove 1 Curse from a Hunter in your area.

In-fiction, the Tailor punctures the Hunters’ bodies with crimson thread and uses it to a) move them around the board and b) hurt them whenever they try to attack. It’s quite a passive form of using Curse, which is because it’s mainly used to set up a gruesome main attack:

Ravenous Mangle. Target a Hunter in any Close area. TN8 2/5 vs Quick. If this attack inflicts Wound damage, the Entity recovers 4 Resolve, and the target is caught in the machinery and they may not Guard, Move or be Repositioned. As a Use action, make a Strength check to free a Hunter in your area from the machinery; if you succeed, they can act as normal.

This, coupled with the Tailor’s ability to easily move Threat, shows the way that it doesn’t move much - it’s exactly where it wants to be, and it’s all about moving you to the right place and then chewing your arm off.

ON THE ENTITY

We experimented briefly with this in the Leah fight in Morningmire; each time she was Broken, she earned a Curse token, and each Curse token gave her enhanced damage. It’s a neat way of representing an escalating danger. We use a similar mechanic in the Reliquary Beast, which is a sort of bear skeleton that has a roaring inferno in its chest cavity:

Special
Fuel for the Fire. The beast roars like a furnace as you smash it apart. Each time the Reliquary Beast takes damage, place a Curse token on it.

Interrupt/s
Ember. The air itself is stinging hot, and rogue flames dance across your clothing. Cost: 1 Threat. 1/1 TN12 vs Hard. On a hit, place a Curse token on the Entity.

Where Leah just got more and more dangerous, we wanted to create something a bit less predictable with the Reliquary Beast. Each time you hit it, it gains a Curse token as it grows more and more frustrated; there are other ways it can build up Curse too, with Interrupts and Manoeuvres, but the players should be generating the largest amount themselves.

When you reduce it to 0 Resolve it explodes, spending all the Curse:

When Broken

Explode. The roaring flames seek escape from broken bones and mangled barding. Make a 3/2 TN7 vs Quick attack versus all Hunters in Close. Increase the TN of this attack by 1 for each Curse token on the Entity, then remove all Curse from the Entity.

The more Curse it had, the more damage it does. We wanted to experiment with the idea of dashing in and out of close range - maybe having someone knock the tar out of it and then running off to let a Rifle or Pistol trigger the attack so it harms as few people as possible.

Also, you can eat someone and trap them in your nightmare fire ribcage:

TITHE. Even these old bones know something of want. 2/3 TN8 vs Hard. Target one Hunter in Front. If this attack inflicts Wound damage, the Hunter is eaten and trapped inside the Entity’s burning rib cage; place them on the Entity’s space on the grid. Whilst inside, they cannot make Attack or Manoeuvre actions, and mark Wounds equal to the number of Curse tokens on the Entity at the end of their turn. When the Entity is Broken (or is reduced to 0 Wounds), resolve the EXPLODE attack and then place the Hunter on any Close area; they can act as normal from now on.

ON THE GRID

This is a tricky one, as it blurs the lines around what the tactical grid represents; it’s not a model of space like a normal map would be, but instead an abstract snapshot of where Hunters are in relation to the Entity. Once we put things on the grid, we have to be careful about what they are in the fiction. If an Entity - say - vomited up a load of corrosive puke on the floor, then we could put down Curse to represent it, but then it stays in place (unless we say otherwise) regardless of the fight’s narrative swirling and outmanoeuvring.

It’s a compromise; I’m sure we’ll have fun working out how best to play with it in the fiction and the mechanics at the same time. My current favourite example is the Head Counter: it was a recruitment officer, once upon a time, and now it is tormented by the thundering hospital train that would bring back broken bodies from the front.

When Broken

Overwhelmed. Wracked with pain, he can no longer keep the train at bay. When first broken: place 1 curse in 3 areas on the grid. When subsequently broken: place 1 curse on the grid.

Special

Wracked. The rails sing fearful of the beast’s terrible approach. At the end of the Entity’s turn, roll a D20; on a 11 or more, place 1 curse anywhere on the grid. On a 10 or less, the Hunters place 1 curse anywhere on the grid.

Ghost Rails. The thunder of wheels on tracks, echoes reverberating, and then: the train, real for a second, smashing it all apart. When an area has three Curse, shift 1 Curse, then clear all Curse in the area and immediately make the following attack against all Hunters in it: 4/5 TN13 vs Quick.

As you can see, the Ghost Rails attack is absolutely punishing - but hard to trigger, and relies on luck and some careful planning. In-fiction, this is because the Entity doesn’t want it to happen; Curse lets us do some fun stuff with Entity motivations. It’s also possible, thanks to the way that Curse is shifted before the attack is resolved, to queue up multiple attacks all in one go; the train appears for a brief and violent second, smashes apart the battlefield, and then departs.

Can I just say? I’m really happy we managed to get Train PTSD as a boss weapon in our horror game. I’m proud of that.

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That’s all for now.

Stay gruesome,

- Grant