Under Hollow Hills

3-5 Players

There is a circus which travels between the mundane and faerie worlds. It brings bright lights, wondrous performances and captures the hearts of all who see it. You will play goblin performers, strange ringleaders, stowaway humans or horrors like the Nightmare Horse, as they discover the hearts of their audience and play at life, death and merriment.

This is a Powered by the Apocalypse game by Meguey & Vincent Baker, the people who made the original Apocalypse World. This is a game which replaces fights with performances and brutal survivors with ever-changing fae performers. 

You won’t need to know how the system works, or even have played any RPGs before you join in. If you want, bring a couple of six-sided dice and something you found which could be from beyond the hedge, but you don’t have to. I’ll be providing playbooks, dice and tokens for all.

In the four hour session we will make characters, make the troupe and then play at least one performance, depending on how much fun people are having in the downtime between shows.

This is a story without any focus on direct violence, but where the fair folk are involved, there might still be some strange and disturbing elements. I’ll be using the X Card and other safety tools to make sure that we remember no game’s more important than the players. 

I’m Charlie Etheridge-Nunn, indie RPG and board game reviewer for Who Dares Rolls, comic writer and regular Dice Saloon GM.