What if creative writing felt less like homework and more like stepping into a living legend? Threshold: Hollow Vale is a “write-to-play” game booklet that blends solo roleplaying with storytelling prompts, inviting players to explore a world of folklore, suspicion, and survival.
Characters in the Vale
Players choose from richly drawn archetypes, each carrying secrets, burdens, or gifts. For example:
- The Plaguebearer: Once a healer, now feared and hunted as they search for a cure — or simply try to outpace their own shadow.
- The Exiled Scholar: Cast out for dangerous ideas, they walk Hollow Vale with nothing but their intellect and a need for redemption.
Each character pushes players to explore themes of trust, identity, and survival while crafting original narratives through writing.
Settings Steeped in Folklore
The world of Hollow Vale is alive with superstition, danger, and wonder. A few evocative locations include:
- The Frostmarch: Silent highlands of ice where every thaw reveals what the cold once buried.
- The Hollow Market: A bazaar grown from the wreckage of a churchyard — a place where food, charms, and secrets change hands, sometimes at a deadly cost.
These backdrops set the stage for atmospheric tales that feel part dark fairy tale, part survival story.
Conflicts and Dilemmas
Players face scenarios that demand both imagination and tough choices, such as:
- The Witch Trial: An accused is to hang at dawn. Evidence is thin. Do you intervene or walk away?
- The Stranger’s Bargain: A cloaked figure offers coin, power, or safety… at an unnamed price.
Through guided questions and narrative prompts, players explore how their characters navigate suspicion, betrayal, and temptation.
Why Hollow Vale Inspires Creative Learning
Like all Threshold booklets, Hollow Vale isn’t just a game — it’s a storytelling toolkit. It helps:
- Writers practice world-building and character development
- Students build critical thinking skills through decision-making
- Educators introduce folklore-inspired writing in a structured but flexible way
Whether you’re a solo RPG fan, a teacher looking for creative exercises, or simply someone who loves folklore and mystery, Threshold: Hollow Vale offers a new way to experience story through play.
Check it out here.
Or try Threshold: Broken Orbit and Threshold: Mirrors & Smoke.