The Unofficial Hollow Knight RPG
A downloadable game
Disclaimer: This is a purely unofficial, not for profit fan project we wish to share with like-minded bug appreciators. No member of our team is affiliated with Team Cherry, and we make no claim to the name or setting of Hollow Knight, nor do we seek to make any profit from our system. Any commercial distribution to anyone under any circumstances is strictly prohibited.
Hollow Knight © Copyright 2021 Team Cherry
Vast kingdoms, ancient mysteries, and adversaries far beyond reckoning await you.
The Unofficial Hollow Knight RPG is an original tabletop role-playing system inspired by Team Cherry's hit indie title. In HKRPG, players take the form of daring bugs going on adventures in the strange and wondrous world of Hollow Knight and its insect-populated kingdoms.
In this game you will find:
- A flexible character creation system with over 100 traits to choose from, allowing players create any sort of bug imaginable, from chitin-bound masked wanderers and silk-weaving spiders to strange chimeras with all manners of insect parts attached.
- A d6 dice pool core system, where more dice is a higher chance of success across combat, survival and social interaction.
- A Path-based progression system that allows players to combine martial and arcane expertise for a limitless variety in playstyles.
- Grid-based combat tailored to Hollow Knight's emphasis on positioning, resource management, and unleashing powerful attacks on your opponents, including mighty Weapon Arts and mysterious Arcana.
- A freeform skill system where a bug can have any manner of proficiency, from ancient languages and arcane research to simpler talents like cooking and sewing.
Join the Community!
HKRPG is a system constantly being built upon by its development team. For access to the latest updates and a collection of supplementary material, or to find potential players as well as games to play, visit the official community Discord!
Download
Development log
- HKRPG: Lands Beyond is now available!Apr 16, 2022
Comments
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Out of curiosity, does anybody know what software this was made with?
LaTeX maybe? You could do it in latex i recon
Oh thanks!
Question what does Temp mean on the character sheets?
Hello! Is there any chance you could send a link to the printer you used for this? It looks great and I'd love to order one as well. Thank you!
Presto Photo for $86 USD gets you a hard cover HKRPG book.
https://www.prestophoto.com/help/8.5x11+Photo+Book
I also printed the expansion "Lands Beyond" in full color saddle-stapled booklet format for $10 each at my local Office Depot Print Shop.
https://www.officedepot.com/b/booklets/N-1212284
The "Hollow Knight Wanderer's Journal" is a beautiful book and amazing visual companion for both players and GM and can be purchased for $32 here:
https://www.fangamer.com/products/hollow-knight-wanderers-journal-book
this looks like a lot of fun! Is there a pre-made campaign that has been made so I don't have to come up with one all on my own?
It would be nice if you had a channel on YT or other video sharing site so there could be videos giving demonstrative guides on character creation/combat/etc., explanations for various changes to the system as its updated, and perhaps a playtest campaign or two to see it all in action.
First of all, this is AMAZING and I kinda want to run a game of it now; second, small question: is there a complete list of skills and/or proficiencies anywhere? I see several examples of both (p. 45-46), but no full directory - is this the kind of thing that players and/or GMs can make up for themselves as they see fit?
I think the Proficiencies and Skills are just something players and GMs are just supposed to work together to create for each character, yeah.
There are some confusing things. Took me a while to understand Hunger, Absorption is quite confusing, as it cannot be found on the sheet, and the biggest thing for me is that templates list "Bonus to Cute/Spook" which isn't explained anywhere.
Is it a number I can add to whichever of those I want when making the character? like, when making a small character, should I do 2.5 cute, 1 spook?
In the chapter What is a Bug, it says under the cute and spook section that the points are to be distributed between the characters cute and spook scores, broken into half points if desired.
I’ve been reading the book but I’m having trouble understanding the absorption rules, can someone explain
THE AMOUNT OF WORK WOW!
i'm confused about how the hunger thing works, can someone help
My understanding is that Hunger represents how many points worth of food you digest whenever you rest. You start with a base amount determined by your Template and then modify it by taking Traits. Since Traits are the main way to gain more stats and abilities at character creation, this means stronger bugs need to eat more. Also, since you always digest a minimum of 10 points there's no benefit to having Hunger below 10. The equipment section shows how filling different meals are.
so you want to have as few hunger as possible? because it looks like the Minus is what i'm supposed to avoid
Are you referring to the Traits that give minus Hunger? They are meant to be trade offs. They lower your Hunger, but give other penalties in return.
Are you referring to the minus Belly status? Yes, avoid that. Letting your Belly points go in to minus is bad.
Basically, you want Hunger to be as close to 10 as possible (because you always lose at least 10 Belly points each day, so having Hunger be 9 is pointless) but if you're willing to have your character eat more, you can let Hunger go over 10. I like to make characters have Hunger 15 because that's how many Belly points you get from a single Meat Ration and I like making my characters a little stronger.
My mans really thinking this is a "normal rpg" when in reality it's a table top rpg.
They've existed for longer than the non-tabletop kind.
For the fillable character sheet the text size for input is ridiculously tiny for everything except Description and Notes. Completely unreadable at less than 50% zoom, only practical at 70%.
Were you using Firefox to open the pdf perchance? I had the same issue, but using Chrome fixed it
I've always wanted something like this so seeing this actually be made makes me smile. :)
So how do I download this game? Am I missing something or am I just stupid and this game is not out yet? All the downloads are just pdfs.
its a ttrpg not a normal rpg which is to say it's a board game their isn't anything to dowload
Its pdfs with the information you need for you to use in a tabletop game with a hollow knight team
There's nothing to download but character sheets and how to make your character because this is basically Dungeons & Dragons but, you can make a kingdom I made on
I can't Install the game. It says the game is run on an incompatible 3rd party website. when viewing the details it just shows to HKRPG page? Anyone have any idea what i can do?
What do you mean install the game? It's a PDF file.
it's not a video game its a board game like Dungeons and Dragons
Hey so I was really excited to join a community for something I thought I would be passionate about. But then I saw the discord server was 18+ without being explicitly stated as such.
Of course, this left me feeling a bit bamboozled. Is there any reason for the server to be 18+?
No, it specifically doesn't allow NSFW content but if they find out you are a minor they will ban you for your own safety (since the internet is a dangerous place)
This looks amazing, And I understand why you wanted to only use d6s for the game. But will you guys ever make a version that could be compatible with the dnd system, like a full set of dice, or even with the dnd class system in place?
I'm not a designer of the game, I haven't even read the rules, and I'm really only on here to send to my friend who likes Hollow Knight, but I can probably answer your question; No.
One of the bigger appeals of d6 games is that almost anyone can use it. It's a lot easier to convince someone to play a TTRPG if they use a common 6 sided dice. Mainly because they aren't worried about the number of sides of a dice, and also buying a bunch of polyhedral dice can be really expensive, and people don't have the time or resources to try and get them. If you really want to play the system with the standard 7-set dice than go ahead and hack it! I'm not sure how easy it would be, but I'm sure it's at least possible.
As for the class system, I very strongly doubt they'll straight up add something like that, if they wanted it they would've included it when designing it. The D&D class system can be fun, it has it's merits and all that, but invokes a specific style of play; of less skill and strategy based, and more accumulation and growth based. Not inherently bad, just probably not what they're looking to add in a Hollow Knight RPG.
Anyways, looking from the comment, it seems like your new to the TTRPG scene. Welcome! I don't speak to many of the members, but the few I've talked to are really nice. I implore you to stay around and read some more games! TTRPGs are one of the most beautiful and interesting forms of art, and I'm glad to see someone expanding their horizons. :]
I am sorta new to the scene, though one of the main reasons I was wondering if they'd make a compatible version is because dnd 5e is the main big system, and honestly what I find to be easiest to use. So finding a ttrpg for a game I love is great, but some may find it hard to learn new things for each variation. (also in my opinion the class system in and is in for a long overdue makeover anyways) I never wanted to change how most of the mechanics work, but something that would work with dnd 5th would be great so that I can bring my little bug character along the adventure with a human fighter and orc barbarian.
That’ll be like seeing a new expansion for a card game and asking it to be “magic the gathering compatible”. There are a lots of tabletop rpgs out there and there is no need for any of them to be compatible with dnd. A hollow knight class for dnd would be an entirely different product to this rpg.
Gonna be honest, my man, you're *probably* going to struggle to find a DM that will allow a Hollow Knight character in their game. And even then, you're going to have more luck just reskinning current stuff in 5 or upcoming 5.5e.
Hollow Knight has a very different magic and melee system from DnD, and a ttrpg that replicates that is going to be so different, by default, that its just not worth even considering system compatibility with DnD.
TBH, I feel like polyhedral dice are made out to be way scarier than they are.
Requiring 4d6 for every person sounds a bit more cumbersome, actually. Though idk. lol.
And a full set can be found for around $15, and with a little more you can buy five sets of dice.
That was long-winded and informative thank you very much
Side note I'm not being sarcastic in case you thought I was
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: It would be far too much work for a team who only works in their spare time, and for a purpose which was never intended and never will be. It's a system for playing bugs in a bug world. If you want to play bugs in DnD you're gonna have to make your own homebrew for it.
I agree with you the guy down below you would have to Homebrew a butt ton if you want it to work
DnD is a blight, try something new for a change.
Looks pretty cool! I've been playing an HK D&D Campaign over on the Hollowed Kingdoms server and it's great, but an actual system just for it sounds very interesting.
Good work! I like that both this and Hollowed Kingdoms exists. I'm making one based on the Chronicles of Darkness system but like... more cake for everyone!
This is amazing.
Damn, I was about to adapt a system and storyline myself from Hollow Knight as it is becoming one of the best games I played in my life, but decided to do a quick search for existing systems with low expectations. This looks awesome!
Is there any chance for a bookmarked version of the PDF?
The problem is that the PDF layout was done entirely in Google Docs, which as far as I'm aware doesn't support "proper" bookmarks. That means a bookmarked version is a big if for the future, but we'll see what we can do!
Oooh, that makes sense (and is unfortunate that Gdocs doesn't support that). But regardless, the game looks pretty cool!
Do you mind if I bookmark it in a PDF editor and send it to you?
Thank you for your offer, but I'm afraid a bookmarked version won't last too long due to how often we update the rules at this stage. Still, thank you for the idea! We'll look into bookmarking the PDF using a separate PDF editor in the future.
You can export a GDocs document and generate the PDF from LibreOffice, that should have bookmarks. Or maybe there are tools to do this automatically: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30304718/create-bookmarks-into-a-pdf-file-via-command-line
Nice to know, we'll check that out. Thank you!