Why I locked the Hollow Watch canon earlier than felt comfortable
Hollow Watch is the second chapter in the Kilgarde project: a modular skirmish terrain set paired with a tightly scoped narrative campaign. Unlike Chapter I, which was deliberately loose and expandable, Hollow Watch depends on a fixed cast of characters, locations, and entities that interlock mechanically and thematically.
That interdependence creates a familiar tension for anyone building a larger creative system: flexibility versus coherence. The more moving parts you allow to remain fluid, the easier it is to keep “options open.” The harder it becomes to actually finish anything.
This post is about why I chose to resolve that tension earlier than felt natural.
The uncomfortable part
When I locked the Hollow Watch canon, several things were still unfinished.
Not all terrain variants were final.
Some scenario edges were still rough.
A few characters could easily have been expanded, merged, or removed.
In a more permissive workflow, those would be reasons to wait. The instinct is to keep the world soft until everything around it has settled. You can always refine later. You can always make room.
The problem is that “later” has a habit of never arriving.
Every unresolved element creates downstream hesitation. You avoid committing to layout because the text might change. You avoid finalising sculpts because the story might shift. You delay writing because the setting isn’t quite “ready.”
Nothing is broken, but nothing is solid either.
The decision
I chose to lock the Hollow Watch canon earlier than I normally would.
That meant formally declaring a final roster of characters and entities, fixing their names, roles, and relationships, and treating those decisions as immutable unless something truly catastrophic emerged.
No quiet tweaks.
No “just one more option.”
No keeping alternatives in reserve.
Once locked, everything else had to work around that foundation.
The consequences
The most immediate effect was speed.
Design decisions stopped looping. Terrain pieces could be shaped to specific narrative needs instead of hypothetical ones. Writing became more precise because it no longer had to hedge. Visual direction tightened because there was no longer ambiguity about tone or intent.
There were costs.
Some flexibility was lost. A few interesting ideas were explicitly set aside. There were moments where the locked canon forced compromises elsewhere, particularly in modularity and future-proofing.
But those constraints also revealed something useful: creativity didn’t diminish. It concentrated.
Instead of asking “what else could this be?”, the work shifted to “how do I make this as strong as possible?” That question is harder, but it produces better results.
Why this matters beyond Hollow Watch
This isn’t a rule about lore, or even about worldbuilding. It’s about decision timing.
There’s a common belief that keeping things open preserves creativity. In practice, it often preserves indecision. Early flexibility feels safe, but it carries a hidden cost: it delays commitment, and commitment is what allows systems to cohere.
Locking decisions early is uncomfortable because it makes trade-offs visible. You can no longer pretend you’ll accommodate every idea. You have to choose.
But once those choices are made, work accelerates. Not because there’s less to do, but because everything you do now has a direction.
The lesson I’m carrying forward
Locking decisions early doesn’t reduce creative potential — it focuses it.
You give up optionality in exchange for momentum. You accept that some ideas won’t make the cut so that the remaining ones can be fully realised. For a project that needs to ship, that trade is usually worth making.
Hollow Watch is better for having a fixed spine. Everything else can flex around it — but only because that spine is no longer moving.