HOLLOWS CROSSOVER ENTITY GAME JAM 2026

And, like: the death of an empire. And masculinity. And comradeship. And mental health. And Britain. And chronic illness. Also pigs. But we use Hollows to express many if not all of those things through the medium of boss battles, and that’s what this jam is about, so put our very clever theming to one side for a bit and focus on some massive gribblers.

See, Hollows has twelve general Entities - fully-realised boss fights - as well as eight more in the two example scenarios Morningmire and Steel City. And each of our nine Wretched Domains scenarios has four more each (give or take), so that’s fifty-six in total, but that’s STILL NOT ENOUGH.

We want you to convert your favourite, or least favourite, boss fights over to Hollows.

There’s PRIZES for the winners! Not “prizes” like the ones that Grant failed to send out to his one-page game contest winners - PRIZES, like the ones Jim successfully dispatched to the Havoc Engine winners earlier this year.

(PRIZES will probably be: something pretty and signed, or a free VTT module, but really you shouldn’t be doing this for the prizes. Think of them more as a celebration than an incentive.)

DATES

This all kicks off at 2PM on 19th October and runs until the last possible second on 15th November. Late entries will be permitted on a case-by-case basis but, you know. Get it in on time. We’d prefer that.

WHAT TO SUBMIT

An Entity using Hollows rules that’s not from Hollows.

Some ideas:

Iconic D&D monsters (beholders, owlbears, dragons, mimics)
Non-iconic D&D monsters (behir, ochre jellies, cloakers, umber hulks)
Standard D&D adventuring party resolved as a single delicious wedge
Dark romance protagonist who has finally succumbed to his worst instincts and gone full monster
The Witches from Puella Magi Madoka Magica
The Witches from Roald Dahl's The Witches
Anything from any given Fromsoft game with a name above its health bar
Cthulhu and/or his friends and associates
I bet there’s something in Silent Hill that would fit, given the theme
Your dog (include photographs of your dog! We want to see it)
The names of and characters drawn on bottles of hot sauce
Whatever creature people pretend exists in your region to confuse and humiliate tourists and the unaware, i.e. drop bears, haggis, hodags etc
You know, I bet there’s a few metal bands out there that would actively like being made into fearsome beasts. Not sure on the optics of fighting them with swords and revolvers though
At least one of those boss fights where the boss is big and you’re running around on a platform in front of it trying to evade attacks from its hands
Creatures from mythology, which we’ve already British-Museum-style ransacked but that’s no reason you shouldn’t have a rummage yourself and see what we felt unable to appropriate (The British Museum’s not a good guide for what you can plunder; if in doubt stick to your own culture’s myths.)
Intellectual property of famously litigious and/or vindictive companies: Seven Mickey Mice stapled together riding a monstrous Goofy. The lass from Grand Theft Auto 6 but she’s carrying the Soul Caliber. Several specific named Games Workshop Contrast paints holding a gun

GUIDANCE

The Hollows corebook (available here!) has a full chapter of advice on Entity creation, but it’s easier than that implies; you can retroengineer anything from looking at a couple of the wrong’uns we have available in the pay-what-you-want Quickstart, and our welcoming Discord is already full of people keen to help both new and established designers make the most of their monsters. You can join them here.

And! AND! There's an introductory How To Make An Entity Blog Post here, so you can get your head around the system.

RULES

No fash
No slurs or discrimination or any of that shit
No generative AI
Make sure you've got the rights to use any art in your submission if you use art
Credit us, and use the lovely Hollow-Born logo we made for you (details here: https://rowanrookanddecard.com/rrd-community-licence/)

QUESTIONS

Can I submit more than one entry?

Go hog wild. Probably better you focus on one good one than several naff ones though

Who has the rights to the entity I design?

You do! You can do whatever you want with it, though Disney may not agree. You have to credit us with the design of the base engine, though, or we'll cry

This looks cool but I don't know where to start!

Come in the Discord and ask whatever questions your heart desires in the Hollows jam channels. We're friendly and we love new, uncorrupted blood! If you don't use discord, post in the itch jam forum.