Hello all. First off I want to just start off by saying that this is my opinion from watching the live play streams, and reading and playing the Quick start with my group. Our opinion is that Hollows could be a great dungeon crawl boardgame. I know the quick play is not the final rules, but after playing and watching we noticed a few things. Combat became stagnant pretty quickly, with each player and the GM basically doing the same things each round. I saw in the live stream against the tailor that the GM at one point just kept saying "I spend 1 threat, make a tn 5 hard roll. Ok, 2 resolve damage, next person." When doing the puncture interruption. I fell kinda into the same rhythm since there was very limited a GM could actually do by the provided rules. Another thought that came up was the threat in the game. It made very little sense to me and the players that the "location" had threat instead of the players. For instance, the tank does a taunt to grab the entity's attention (threat), but then just maneuvers to another location and bam, they have no threat now (if the new location is empty). The exploration section seemed just nothing but a pass-through to make a quick roll to get a new item and then move on to the next big bad fight. I noticed even in the comments when someone asked about the lore, landscape for the players to know/investigate the response was just, they most likely research it before hand, so they already know. Lastly we found an issue with Doom and stagnant bosses. Yes the bosses can get some minor tweaks from having more doom from the players, but it's attacks, interrupts and maneuvers seemed to just be stagnant things that the player's only react too. They have a "break" mechanic, but it does something once which is usually a simple attack, or resolve damage, but then they just go back to the same exact attack/interrupt attacks. There is a big push that the bosses from this game are like MMO or Darksoul bosses, but in those, when we see the break, everything changes and the players have a whole new attacks and abilities to learn/worry about. Doom is a very minor unimportant thing from our playthrough. It only comes up if the player's die for the most part, and very slightly provides entities a boost. There wasn't anything about it changing the landscape, or other ways to accumulate it or for the GM to use against the players. We figured that each entity killed should add doom, or if they killed the people to get the relics it would add doom. We also felt the the GM should be able to use Doom to manipulate the Hollow itself to attack/affect the players or world around them. Again these are just some of the thoughts and concerns that came up from watching, reading and playing the game a GM, Player, and industry Game Designer. Cheers all, and I want to say again, these are thoughts and concerns, not attacks or anything else.

user avatar image for Producer Chant
7
Share

Share

Twitter

Bluesky

Facebook

Copy Link

Comments 7
Loading

Confirm