Jared: First off tell us a little about yourself/The team behind Hollowed Kingdoms
Kara: Hello, my name is Kara, also known as Winona Pike (or Winona). I have been a writer for 15 years and been playing/DMing Dnd 5e games for my friends for the last 10 years. I am also the creator and head writer for Hollowed Kingdoms. My husband, Nick, also known as Darksnowman13, is the lead game designer for the project. The team behind Hollowed Kingdoms is a group of talented friends and Hollow Knight fans. Some who I have commissioned for art, others for writing or editing.
J: When and how did you get started in tabletop games?
K: I first got started with tabletop games about 10 years ago when I was in college. A friend of mine, named Barry, needed one more player for his Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Campaign. Barry knew I was a writer and thought I enjoyed playing Dungeons and Dragons. He was right, and it blossomed into the love I have for tabletop games today. I started playing Dungeons and Dragons (with 5e being the rules for my first campaign), but then started expanding to other systems like Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, Pathfinder/Starfinder and Call of Cthulhu.
J: What made you want to make content specifically for tabletop games?
K: What I love about tabletop games is there is a lot of collaborative storytelling. Like mentioned before I am a writer, and more specifically a novelist. I love writing Scifi/Fantasy stories and I even was self published for a time, but what I loved most about writing was world building. So when I discovered ttrpgs I was a bit intimidated at first, I had never before let anyone else have a say in the story like this before, but when I let people into my world it expanded the world in so many wonderful ways. I never would have thought I would become a ttrpg content creator, but now I am surprised I didn’t start making any sooner!
J: Next tell us about the beginning of The Hollowed Kingdoms Project?
K: It started roughly a year and a half after the original Hollow Knight game released in 2017. I was super into the game and thought it could be a cool setting for an adventure or possibly a mini-campaign with friends. I asked my friends what bugs they may want to play as and my husband (boyfriend at the time) started making stats for each race. However, my husband ran with this idea and started to create more than just a handful of races. It got to the point where it led to this conversation we had while driving:
Me: Ok we do not need that many races for them to choose from. We are just making a small book of playable races.
Nick: Wait, I thought we were making a player’s hand book?
Me: Do you want to make a player’s hand book?
Nick: Yes…
Me: …Ok looks like we are going to make a player’s hand book then!
And with that one sentence our project was officially born.
J: Where did the name Hollowed Kingdoms come from?
K: I remember we had some trouble at the beginning trying to figure out a name for our project. Memory is a bit fuzzy since it’s been such a long time ago, but I wanted the title of our Players Guidebook to link to either Hollow Knight or at least have the word “bugs” in some way. I at the beginning of the project was the sole driver of the creative process and none of the names I brain stormed stuck. It wasn’t until my husband casually suggested the name “Hollowed Kingdoms” and the name stuck.
J: What can people expect coming into the website/social medias etc?(The links for the linktree can be part of this answer)
K: We have a number of sites that you can find us on. All of them you can find on our linktree which can be found here: https://linktr.ee/hollowedkingdoms
Homebrewery
We use Homebrewery to create/share all of our official content. Everything we have made so far for the project is found there along with other personal homebrew.
https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/user/WinonaPike
Discord
We have a discord server where you can not only keep up on the latest news for Hollowed Kingdoms, which include updates to the content we have created. Our Discord also has a friendly community of both Hollow Knight and Dungeons and Dragons fans. Where you can meet some people who worked on the project if you have questions on anything, but also where you can find groups of people to play what we currently have available for playtesting.
Tumblr/Twitter/Bluesky
These are our main social media platforms other than Discord. You can see posts on updates to the project. Tumblr is our most active and original blog for the project. While our Twitter and Bluesky accounts go under the name Mad Lad Games, since we not only use it for the project but for other homebrew my husband and I create.
https://hollowedkingdoms.tumblr.com/
https://bsky.app/profile/madladgames.bsky.social
YouTube
Our YouTube Channel is where we post all of the recordings of the playtesting games we have run for the Hollowed Kingdoms Project. These are podcast style games with some pictures and gameplay edited in. These videos are easy to just put on the background and listen to.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC72bDsM5_Bb9AQbLJBhWlSg
Kofi
Our Kofi is a place where you can donate a few dollars to help keep us going. Every little bit helps as everything we have paid for artists, writers, editors has been out of our own pocket.
https://ko-fi.com/karajoneswriter
J: What do you see as the future of The Hollowed Kingdoms? Goals?
K: We have a couple of goals in mind for the future, one of those being a Hollowed Kingdoms “Monster Manual” to pair with the Players Guidebook. We are currently putting our main focus on the Players Guidebook, but we are hoping that soon after its official release we can also have the “Monster Manual”. Since I worked on a good chunk of it during NaNoWriMo 2023 last year. I also worked on a Beginners Adventure/Module during that time so I have a dual goal of Monster Manual and Adventure soon after the release of the Players Guidebook.
Another goal of ours is to set up an official Hollowed Kingdoms website. This way we have one location for people to find our Players Guidebook, Monster Manual, Adventures, links to our social media and updates to the rules if necessary. We are a bit spread out at the moment so I think having one site for a majority of the content would be beneficial.
And our final goal is to eventually set up a live stream for a Hollowed Kingdoms Campaign. I have had this dream for a long to run a long-term campaign for Hollowed Kingdoms. This goal is the most far out goal because I want to make sure the groundwork for it is solid, but I already can not wait to start working on this one.
We also have one of two more fun surprises planned for down the line, but I will leave it there for now.
J: What do you have coming up in projects? Links? Release dates etc?
K: Hollowed Kingdoms fans will be happy to hear that we are currently working on our last Subclass for the project. I consider this one of the last large chunks of the project before working on major edits for balancing the classes and subclasses we have already made. Besides that the next thing we will be working on are custom Backgrounds, Feats and Magic Items to fit in the Hollowed Kingdoms setting.
For release dates, after reviewing what is left to do for the Players Guidebook, we have estimated that Hollowed Kingdoms should be ready to be fully released (at the latest) next year.
(Note: Instead of putting links up above we can put them here if wanted)
J: Anything else you would like to add?
K: I just want to take a moment and thank all of the fans of this project; both new and old. This all started with a wish to make a fun game for friends, but it has turned into a passion project that is a love letter to Team Cherry and everything they have made so far. To already see and hear stories and pictures of the campaigns you are running with your friends warms my heart. You don’t know how happy I am to see what you created out of the building blocks we have made for you and I can’t wait to see more.
I hope this interview has gotten new people interested in our project and want to check it out. We have put so much work into this project and even after the initial guidebook is done we have so much we want to do afterwards. I also like to thank Jared for this opportunity, it’s been a pleasure writing these answers.
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