GAME INDEX: 15128

Dear players,
As usual, in this these crazy Pseudo Edwardian/Victorian times, you and your team of spectral investigators have been called once again. This time, to the damp and sunless village of Gashlycrumb. In particular, to the slowly dilapidating boarding house atop Gashlycrumb Hill. It is here that the children claim to be haunted by a spectre, one that they have begun to call the Umbrellaman. 

Time is of the utmost importance, as two of the 26 orphaned children have already been found missing.  The local authorities have no idea where have gone; it is assumed that they have run away, as “those types” of children are wont to do. The children fearfully blame the Umbrellaman. The headmaster is at her wits end. It is at the behest of an anonymous letter, written in a child’s scrawl, that you have been requested to come; as whoever wrote the letter has seemingly followed your cases in the papers.

And so, you lug your clockwork and vaguely steampunkish ghost detecting equipment to the north over the course of three days.

The adults who run this place are not amused when you arrive. But with enough pleading from the children, they agree to you staying for an extended weekend. If nothing else, they are sure that you will finally prove their made-up horror stories are false.

And you set up shop in the great foyer.

1 more child dies that night. Little Tim, his neck broken at the bottom of the staircase. It is, as usual, considered an accident; a curious boy, intrigued by the research team and their fabulous devices, slips on the staircase in the middle of the darkness. Of course, the remaining children know otherwise. Umbrellaman has struck again.

The groundskeeper claims to have travelled back down to town to request the presence of the constabulary, and returns early that evening with a message that the police are too busy with more important cases. But they are on “the list” and will come by “when they can.”

The next night, your weathervanes and strings of metal pick up a wandering shadow. As a team you race into empty dining hall, where you meet face-to-face with the tall, gaunt shadowy figure, a long black scarf draped from his crooked, holding a long crooked shadow of an umbrella that sucks up what little torchlight you point at the figure. His face,  a ghostly skeletal form, stretches and shrieks, echoing off the damp stones of the hall. And all goes quiet.

When you wake (if that’s what it could be called), you find yourself laying down, staring face up at a ceiling of crumbling stucco. Your body is…different. You hear a voice, but not from somewhere in the room. But in your head.

“Who are you? Where are you?”  The little child questions, scared.

Another child wakes up in a filthy bed next to you. You turn, but…not exactly, to see her rub the sleep from her eyes. She sleepily calls you a name that you don’t recognize: “What’s wrong?”

You find yourself replying to her, “I don’t know. There’s someone else here.”

She whispers, curling up in a ball, “Umbrellaman?”

“No, someone else.”

You absently-minded speak up “Who are you?” And you hear the first voice scream in terror. The girl suddenly flings her worn blanket over her head, “STOP IT! YOU’RE SCARING ME!”

Suddenly, you quietly realize that you are in the child’s head, somehow merged with the boy.

Yes, dear players, you have never quite experienced this before in your ghost hunting and debunking ways.

At the morning call for chores, it is announced that investigators left a message that they had to leave suddenly, with the promise to return eventually; but please do not touch the devices and sensors that were left behind. Not that it matters much to the adults that run this place.

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Dear players, 
Each one of you is mentally trapped in a child who lives their dreary lives at Gashlycrumb Hall for for Wayward Youngsters. You each inhabit the mind of a different child. The school season is out, and most of your child host days are spent doing some amount of house chores, followed by reading in a vast, dank library, and the optional hour or two of sportsball in the courtyard, weather permitting of course. After the dinner call, your lot is usually sent to bed immediately, but due to the short staff, it isn’t too hard for clever boys and girls to escape into the halls in the middle of the night unnoticed; provided that they want to, with the ever present Umbrellaman wandering in the shadows.

 Your goal, obviously is to find where your bodies are kept, and restore yourself to your bodies somehow, all the while trying to put a stop to Umbrellaman’s spree of murders in the house. 

Remember, your character is who you play. And you are trapped in the body of a frightened child. Just because you want to do something, that doesn’t mean that the child is going to go through with it. Or that they even have the strength to perform that action. Or that the few adults that remain around you will believe the story that they tell on your behalf. Or that the ever-knowing presence of Umbrellaman will you. And so and so forth.

Thankfully, you can sense each other members’ child that is their host without too much trouble. When close to each other, you do seem to have a mental connection across the spirit plane to communicate without having your child speak it. But be warned, each child host can also clearly hear your thoughts, and will hear of your plans, too.

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Your characters start with 10 points, which you can divide up as you choose to see fit. You may divide the points between these two stats:

PERSUATION – This is your ability to persuade your child host to do things. Remember, they are frightened children, and will not likely wish to do things that they are afraid of. But with gentle persuasion, you might just change their mind.

FORCE – With enough mental clarity, you can actual force your child to do things, regardless if they want to, effectively taking control of their own bodies. However, this is very draining, both on yourself and your child host. By using force, your child can, at the GM’s discretion, suddenly gain the strength and speed of an adult, if only for a very short time.

You also have a third rating, which is known as:

SUBTLETY – This value starts at the value of lower of the two stats above. This is used to help conceal your true motives from the child mind that you share, and any other child minds that might be able to read your thoughts.

And finally, you have a fourth stat, known as:

FOCUS – Grab 10 rare precious coins and place them face up, to represent your focus. As you lose focus, flip the coins face down.

Face up focus represents your own personality and consciousness as a separate entity from the child host.  As your focus is spent and flip face down ( tails-side face up ), you become a less separate self, and more intertwined with your child host. However, as your focus shrinks and you are more absorbed by the child host, the child will accept your instruction as their own motivations. 

When you hit 0 focus, you are gone, lost forever. You have been absorbed into the child host’s psyche.

Dearest players and GM,
You will also need to create your hosts, together with the GM, as the GM will not only be controlling the world around you, but will be controlling your child hosts as well.

Player may choose the gender of their child hosts, and age ( preferably between the ages of 8 and 11). And using the charts below, the players and GM will need to create a small sampling of each child’s fearful secrets.

Each player rolls 6d6. The player then breaks up their dice into set of 2 dice, and selects 3 things from the list below based on those pairs. 

Dice Rolls	1	2	3	4	5	6	
1	Abused 	Parents or adult relatives	a terrible storm	The wild canines	The infection	Nightmares	
2	Abandoned 	Guardians  or non-relational adults	The unforgiving sea	The carrion avian	The shadows	Questionable faith	
3	Ran away	Siblings	The crawling forest	The pale horse	The confusion	Thing that talk that shouldn’t	
4	Trapped	A bully	The desolate swamp	A rogue wave	The seizures	Visions	
5	Knew too much 	A person of highest regard	The mining pits	The ever-watching pet	The insight	Connected to the dead	
6	Quakes in fear from	A person of low regard	The shifting sands	The rodent horde	The secret	Demons	

These three elements are things that are related to the child’s past that the child fears. The player can sense these things about their child host…but they don’t know the full story yet as to what had happened to the child in the past to cause this trauma regarding those elements.

Additionally, every child is good at something. Whether it’s something like drawing or music, or good with animals, or mechanical inclination. Or maybe sports.

The players and the GM will need to jointly decide for each child host one ability that the child likes to do, and is good at doing. The players can roll on the chart below, or decide on their own.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	
1	Hide and Seek	A team sport	Working with farm animals	Writing, story-telling	Likes taking mechanical things apart and rebuilding them	Can sense things others can’t	
2	Musically inclined	A bundle of energy	Watching the stars and planets	Pirate-play	Researching in the library	Knows all the secrets	
3	Crafting toys	Exploring nooks and crannies	Throwing objects	chemistry	Getting the truth from others	Good at lying	
4	Sculpting, drawing or painting	Running very fast	Making weird little weapons	Manipulating others	Never falling asleep	“talks” to pets	
5	Performing in front of others	Swinging and climbing	Setting pranks and traps	Being sneaky	Gardening, digging, and planting	Opposite of afraid of heights	
6	baking	swimming	Catching small wild animals	Good with farm animals	Hiding and disguising objects	Unhealthy obsession with fire	

Dearest GM,
As a GM, it is your job to keep challenging the players, filling in details of the world, and to keep the story moving.

During the day, as a GM, you should assign each player a chore within the building. Chores can be assigned to a single child, or in small groups. Since there are only 4 adults currently in residence ( the headmaster, the groundkeeper, the nurse, and the lady of the house ), this will provide ample time for the player children to do some un-watched snooping during the day. 

During the Lunch/Dinner bell, all children are expected to be in the dining hall, with the exception of a few selected children who help prepare and serve the meal along with the nurse and the lady of the house.

During the night, it is up to the players to go off and do stuff. 

It is your job also to provide roadblocks in way of what the players want to do. And you have quite a few tools at your disposal, including things below:

A) Remember, players are trapped in the bodies of young children. They are brave heroes. They are mostly scarred by having no one to love them, and scared by an outside world that shows them no pity. And that’s even BEFORE the Umbrellaman showed up! If a player wants to do something, she must effectively ASK ( persuade ) or FORCE ( force ) the child to do so.

Don’t forget the child’s backstory! Things related to the backstory of a child may even further hinder a player’s attempt to move forward. 

B) What few adults that ARE around generally don’t believe the stories of the children and their little imaginary adventures. They have been bitten too many times in the past by these stories. The adults prefer order, and demand that the children follow their guidelines to the fullest.

C) The rules for Umbrellaman are left a bit sketchy. Ultimately, he is a ghost who is preying on the children for some unknown reason. He really doesn’t want adult involvement ( but clearly he has no problems with removing adult interference if needed ). Most of his involvement will be supernatural in nature. If a child does start becoming too successful for a player, and there’s no adult available to get in the way, there’s no reason Umbrellaman can’t show up and put a little fear into the bugger. And Unbrellaman WILL absolutely use a child’s backstory against that child.

D) The world itself is of an adult construct. Large doors are heavy. Extendable ladders that provide access to hidden attics are really only within an adult’s reach. Motorized equipment controls are confusing. That kind of thing. Make sure that the children don’t have an easy time of it in an adult-sized world.

My dear players,
When a GM offers you the spotlight to do something, say what you want to do. The first hurdle is that the GM will let you know if you are having an inner monologue with your child host, and if the child host is opposing your desires in some fashion.

Dearest players, here is a word about the dice,
Dice are rolled whenever the GM calls for it, to determine if an action is to proceed, which will usually occur during a Risky Action, or the use of Persuation or Force. The GM will indicate how many dice you are to roll initially, and then you and the other players may do things to adjust the amount of dice accordingly.

Normally when rolling dice, each 5 or 6 that is rolled is considered to be a success.  However, if a child’s special trait is in play during this roll, a success is 1, 2, 3 or 4.

After rolling, you will count up your successes. Based on your successes, the story will continue as follows:

No success: the GM describes the absolute failure of the outcome. (on a Force action, lose a Focus token)
A roll of 1 success: The player describes the slight failure of the outcome. (on a Force action, lose a Focus token )
A roll of 2 or 3 successes: The GM describes the result of a favorable outcome for the player.
A roll of 4 or more success: The player gets to describe the result of the very favorable outcome. However, the GM is free to alter the description if the player goes a little too crazy.

And now, a word about types of actions,
The first kind of action is an “external action”, which is essentially the child host doing something in the world. The other two types of actions are ”internal” actions, which are used to determine whether or not the child host will actually do what the player requests the child to do ( by use of Persuation or Force).

External Actions;
In general, the world reacts as it would if a child were performing actions. You should treat these things with that logic. If a player makes a child walk down a hill, for instance, it can be assume that the child can do so without incidence. If the player makes her child attempt to lift a horse carriage…well, the attempt surely can be made, but expect failure in the actual lifting part. So, in a lot of cases, there will be no need to roll any dice; the typical nature of the action will narratively determine what happens.

Now, it should be said, that when Unbrellaman is around, reality does get a bit unhinged. The supernatural is odd beast, and almost all actions that take place while in the confines of a supernatural events should be considered risky and require at least one die roll. In fact, most will probably require two…the first die roll would be made to determine if the child host will actual do what the player want them to do, the second would be to see if the risky action succeeds.

RISKY ACTIONS:
As stated above, the GM is free to request roll of the dice of his choosing for reasonably risky action, when dealing with the supernatural. For example, a player has gotten her child host to walk along the outer edge windowsill of the building to gain access to a neighboring room. A child *could* reasonably do this, but there is a chance of falling. So the GM calls out “the stakes,” which is simply determining how many initial dice the player will roll…the more dice, the easier the action is to perform.

In the case of windowsill walking, the GM offers the player the stakes of 3, and hands the player three dice. 

Additional dice may be added before the roll in the following ways:
-- A player may flip over a focus token to gain a die.
-- Each other player may add a description of danger to the scene. At the GM’s discretion, each detail added to the scene may award another die to the player about to roll.

PERSUATION:
If a child host has a reason for not pursuing a course of action as requested by the player, the GM will let you know. At which point, you can PERSUADE or FORCE your child to do so. 

When you persuade, the amount of dice you roll is based on the following conditions:
-- X amount of dice equal to your Persuasion.
+2 if the child has no related backstory to the action.
-4 if the child has a good reason to be violently opposed to the action.

+1 dice for each Subtlety point you wish to subtract.

FORCE:
If you wish to FORCE the child to do something, and basically take over her body for the action, the amount of dice you roll is based on:
--X amount of dice equal to your current Force.
-2 if you had just previously failed an attempted Persuation.
+2 if the action is immediate and quick (such as dropping something, or sqeezing a trigger on a gun )
-4 if the action deals with the child’s backstory.

Since taking control over a body is quite draining, after a Force roll, you flip over an amount of Focus tokens to their face-down condition for every success rolled.

My dear players, a note about your child’s special trait:
When you are doing something that you think relates to your child’s special trait, let the GM know…she will let you know if she agrees or not.

If the GM agrees that child’s special trait is somehow related to what you are asking your child host to do, the child will do it, no questions asked, and there is no need for you to roll a Persuation or Force check.
 
In fact, if you request that your child do something related to their trait, you can flip over a Focus token back to being faceup.

However, just because the child is doing something they like, that doesn’t mean it’s not risky!
Any risky action that is taken while the child host’s special trait is in play will still need a risky action dice roll. (The GM will be the final arbiter of this decision.) If this is the case, then the success values are reversed….a 1, 2, 3 or 4 will count as a success. 

Dearest GM:
One of your most useful tools to block the actions of the players is the antics of Umbrellaman. Umbrellaman is rather sneaky and clever. Not only will he use his knowledge of each child’s backstory to scare them from performing the player’s wishes, he will use each child’s special traits to capture their attention and lure them away from what they should be doing. In other words, not only will the players need to use Persuation and Force to hold a child steady against their fears, but the players will need to uses Persuation and Force to keep the child focused on the task at hand.

It should be noted that when Umbrellaman kills, it ALWAYS looks like an accident. That is, if the body remains to be found. Often, a child will simply disappear. And you have plenty of other children to kill or “disappear” on a nightly a basis. However, Umbrellaman can only be in one place at a single time, so if two players are off doing different things, Umbrellaman can only focus his efforts on a single one of them.

And those children that disappear….feel free to have the player find their bodies eventually. But again, whatever clues that remain on the bodies should indicate the obvious potential accident and NOT a desperate kill. Bloated bodies washed up on the end of a pond…clearly the case of a poor swimmer entangled in the weeds. A broken neck at the bottom of a forgotten stairwell, they obviously should not have been exploring the bell tower.

The adults of Gashlycrumb Hall are fairly inept and uncaring. In fact, at some point in the game you will need to decide that at least one of them is actually in cahoots with the Umbrellaman, working to hide his existence, and sending red herrings out to the other adults, and may even dispose of the bodies! If nothing else, the adult are under the spell of Umbrellaman.

Feel free to use the table below to help inspire you on how to use the adults.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	
1	A drunkard	Survivor of plague	Always the poorest	Deal with the devil	Wishes to communicate with the dead	A plan for revenge	
2	Last of his/her family	Escaped criminal	Shunned by the community	Poisoned the family	Taxidermy	Trainer of unusual animals	
3	Broken from the war	Shipwreck survivor	Gambling debts	Hiding a secret	Extreme sense of justice	A poor safecracker	
4	Physically deformed	Loss of faith	Runaway carriage	Dabbles in witchcraft	Science demands sacrifice	Searching for the secret of Gashleycrumb	
5	Spouse died at the hands of a child	Spouse ran away with family	Failure at everything	Mocked by critics and audiences alike	Unusual at-home apothecary	Home is far, far away	
6	Farming incident	Haunted by nightmares	Kicked out of school 	Engrossed by tales of the grotesque	Waiting for the inheritance	No one understands his/her genius	

My fair GM,
As you go along, surely you will become stuck with ideas as to how to proceed with regards to revealing clues and information and whatnot. After all, you should ensure that the players are moving forward towards resolving the case of the Umbrellaman in some regard, however slowly, or dangerous it may seem.

Below I have provided a table of ideas regarding clues and ephemera to help spur these ideas along. Use these as mere suggestions and creative sparks; you do not need to strictly adhere to the descriptions. 

	1	2	3	4	5	6	
1	fading prints: hand, feet or otherwise	Crudely drawn map 	A child’s plaything, corrupted.	Something sticky	“This doesn’t belong here”	A part of a costume	
2	Scent of something burning	Air movement	Temperature change	A violent warning	Remains of a ritual	Something used for personal hygiene 	
3	Something squishy	Animal (or otherwise) growl	A glow	When broken, it contains something	A book, worn with a recent history	A key or jewelry	
4	An inanimate object moves	Thing in a box	Fluid left behind	Sounds that *might* be described as music	A statue, stuffed animal, or effigy	Forgotten paperwork found	
5	A clipping from the past	Disturbing mouth sound	Voices screaming	Something medical…maybe not originally used for medical purposes	Food left out	Something stringy	
6	Damaged rendering	Something cherished, found recently ruined	A whiff of something from nature	“Creatively” used tools	Proof of abuse	They thought they left it behind	

Gashlycrumb Hall is sprawling, old manor, with all sorts of odd nooks and crannies, some left behind through the years as the previous owners constantly built and rebuilt wings and rooms and courtyards on top of each other. If you are in need of a random Gashlycrumb place, free feel to use this chart as a guide.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	
1	An unusual place to sleep	Contains things of sentimental value	The hideout that kids think they only know about	Converted for ceremonies	Everything is covered in sheets	Through the unknown peephole	
2	A place of solitude	A place for Sportball	Light never shines here	Surrounded by ruins	Piles of dirt	Candles everywhere	
3	A converted lab	A place for exploration	A place to view the stars	A place for learning	Natures has reclaimed this place 	A shed	
4	Where food should be	Beneath the cellar	Where grand entrances were once made	A place for relaxation	Just outside the door	A place that keeps the Hall running	
5	Where food shouldn’t be	Above the main living quarters	A place of sorrow	Hidden behind, above or under something	At the end of a staircase	Remnants of those from the past	
6	Antiquities everywhere	A place of performance	Where “things” are fixed or broken	A place for supplies that shouldn’t be here	A place to view the landscape	One of the many towers.