Hollyhock

Art Direction, Illustration, Writing, Editing, & Game Design

Hollyhock is a tabletop roleplaying game set in the surreal and theatrical world of the Fae, taking place throughout a celebration of mischief, trickery, wit, and skill– the Hollyhock Festival! Pull pranks, dive into the political and social machinations of Fae society, and find yourself immersed in the mystery and delight of the Fae world’s most beloved holiday.

Hollyhock features 116 fully colored and illustrated pages, containing 8 playbooks and 7 archetypes to build a unique character from, a card-based move system, and a variety of art and lore.

download the game for free here!

"Hollyhock is a GM-less game made for 3-6 players, who each take on the roles of various fair folk as they partake in the titular festival, with their own motivations, secrets, and goals.

This game takes inspiration from and builds on the Belonging Outside of Belonging system by Avery Alder and Ben Rosenbaum. Instead of using tokens, players use their moves to build a hand out of a deck of cards in order to achieve their desires.

Hollyhock is framed as a play– it thrives with drama and comedy, and is structured in Acts. Each Act culminates in the execution of the players plans– whether they be spectacular failures, delightful success, and anything in between. Within this game you will find all the rules, guidelines, and lore that provide structure for the narrative of each adventure to unfold!"

Creating the Game

Art

As the lead artist, I was responsible for building a visual style and aesthetic for the game that would capture the mood, energy, and unique flair of Hollyhock as a game. TTRPGs are books, and the art that accompanies the written portions of the game is an integral part of their identity.

It was important to capture a style that felt bright and vivid, as well as hand made. I used rough brushes that replicated the look of traditional drawing tools, and a color palate with focuses on vivid, energetic colors in both pastels and rich tones. A lot of the design elements of Hollyhock are inspired by a colorful and natural twist on art deco aesthetics, and more concerned with patterns and imagery evocative of fairy tales and shadow puppets than realism.

Something else that was important about the art of Hollyhock was capturing the strangeness of the fae, from the bug-like to the ethereal to the eerie, this is a game about creatures both weird and delightful!

Writing & Design

Writing for Hollyhock involved drafting and laying out the mechanics of the game-- the actions players might take, the structures and frameworks that give the game it's shape-- and the lore of the world the game is situated within. It was incredibly important to the team, as we were writing, to focus on integrating the mechanical and narrative elements of the game smoothly together, so that each supports the other.

This involved crafting unique playbooks and archetypes, which give players well-integrated narrative and mechanical choices for building their characters, designing a card-based move system that facilitated roleplay opportunities while making strategic progress toward each players goal of executing their trick, and crafting a rich context and setting that players would find interesting to explore and make their own.

We set out to find a balance between a high degree of player-freedom, and supporting some areas we had found difficult in other gm-less games in Hollyhocks design!

The Team

I was lucky enough to work with the extremely talented, creative, and passionate Milo Duclayan, Katherine Townsend, and Daniela Vega on this project throughout 2022 and 2023. From art to game design to production to graphic design, everyone brought specialties to the table that flowed incredibly together to bring to live our vision for this game. Though we each had our specialties, all writing and designing duties were highly collaborative for Hollyhock, and the nature of such close collaboration allowed all of us to learn-- both from each other, and about the process of creating and publishing an independent TTRPG.

See the Hollyhock team discuss creating, publishing, and marketing TTRPGS with industry professionals and huge inspirations Benjamin Rosenbaum and Jay Dragon on the MRAH podcast!