Hollow Witness

HOLLOW WITNESS Something Looked Back. A Solo Investigative Horror RPG You found the place. You don't know what it is. You don't know why it exists. You only know that something happened here. And now you're inside. Hollow Witness is a solo investigative horror RPG about entering impossible places, uncovering what happened, and getting out before the Hollow notices you. You investigate abandoned buildings, forgotten facilities, impossible rooms, cult sites, corrupted infrastructure, and places that should not exist. You gather evidence. You follow leads. You make connections. You perform rituals you don't completely understand. And eventually, if you're unlucky, something looks back. THE CORE GAME Hollow Witness uses a fast, fiction-first dice-pool system. When you attempt something risky, roll your skill dice and take the highest result: 5–6 — HOLD You succeed. 3–4 — COST You succeed, but something goes wrong. 1–2 — RUIN Things get worse. Simple. The complexity comes from what happens afterward. Your decisions affect the site. The site affects you. And what happens to you follows you home. THE DOOM CLOCK Every investigation has a Doom Clock. At first, the site may be quiet. Then something notices you. Then the Hollow begins to bleed through. Then reality starts coming apart. Eventually... The Hollow Opens. The Doom Clock doesn't exist simply to tell you when you lose. It exists to make you decide: How much more can I risk before I get out? HORROR ISN'T JUST COMBAT The things you encounter aren't puzzles with hit points. Some can be fought. Some can be avoided. Some can be understood. Some can be interrupted. Some require a ritual. And some... should never be confronted at all. You aren't a superhero. You're an investigator who happened to be the person who walked through the door. THE COST OF KNOWING Hollow Witness tracks more than wounds. Stress represents what the Hollow takes from you. Scars represent what you survived. Fractures represent what you couldn't survive unchanged. And sometimes an investigator doesn't come back. But that doesn't necessarily mean their story is over. A lost investigator can leave a permanent mark on the campaign — becoming a voice, a warning, a shadow, or something much worse. The dead don't simply disappear. They become part of the Hollow. A CAMPAIGN THAT REMEMBERS Every case changes the campaign. Your contacts change. Your investigator changes. The world changes. And the Hollow's reach grows. The campaign has its own Rift , an escalating measure of how close the Hollow is to becoming something permanent. You can push it back. You can slow it down. You can fail. But you can't pretend nothing happened. Eventually, the question becomes: Can you close the Hollow before something comes through? PLAY SOLO. DISCOVER WHAT HAPPENS. Hollow Witness is designed to be played without a GM. The game gives you: Solo investigation procedures Procedurally generated sites Investigative objectives Horror and encounter tables Doom Clock escalation Stress and Fracture mechanics Equipment and resource management Contacts and downtime Campaign progression Permanent Scars Investigator Legacy A campaign-level Rift A complete Starter Campaign You don't need to know what happens before you begin. That's the point. THIS IS THE FIRST PUBLIC RELEASE Hollow Witness started as a small experiment built from the 24XX system. It kept growing. A Doom Clock became Stress. Stress became Fractures. Cases became campaigns. Campaigns needed consequences. Lost investigators needed stories. And eventually the game became something much larger than the little rules engine it started from. So I'm putting it out into the world. This is the first public release. Play it. Break it. Generate terrible investigations. Lose investigators. Tell me what happened. And if something genuinely strange happens at your table... I want to hear about it. CREDITS & LICENSE Hollow Witness Designed by Bill Heckler / Drag 'Em Studios https://dragemstudios.neocities.org/ Cover and Back Panel Art - Generative AI (ChatGPT} Hollow Witness is an original game built using the 24XX system as its foundation. The 24XX rules used in this game are derived from the 24XX System Reference Document by Jason Tocci , released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) . ([itch.io][1]) 24XX attribution: 24XX rules are CC BY Jason Tocci. The Hollow Witness original setting, text, characters, scenarios, campaign material, artwork, presentation, and original game content are © 2026 Bill Heckler / Drag 'Em Studios, except where otherwise credited. The 24XX license permits adaptation and commercial use provided appropriate attribution is maintained. ([Creative Commons][2]) 24XX System Reference Document: 24XX by Jason Tocci Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International: CC BY 4.0 License ONE LAST THING Don't go looking for the Hollow. It already knows where you are.