What it is
Hulme and Daughter is a 5e-compatible horror rescue adventure for levels 3–5 about a gentle old toymaker, a thing wearing his daughter's face, and five children who are about to stop being children. Ambrose Hulme made toys. Seven years ago his daughter died, and he asked the dark to give her back, and something said yes. It is still in his shop, still wearing her face, and it has taught him a way to keep a child from ever growing up, growing sick, or going away.
Four children off Crooked Lane are already toys. The fifth is on his workbench tonight: a nine-year-old girl whose left arm has gone to wood as far as the elbow. Your party has to get five children out of the shop before he finishes the fifth, and decide what to do about a kind old man who did something monstrous for a reason you can follow all the way to the end.
Content note
Children are hurt in this adventure, and one died before it began. The transformation is written as wood, porcelain, stitching, and stiffening joints rather than blood, and no scene requires a child to suffer where the players can see it. The adventure includes advice for talking to your table first and for softening the kept children's experience. The listing recommends reading the content note aloud before you begin. For more on that conversation, see the session zero checklist.
Best for
Game Masters who want a complete horror one-shot that fits in a single evening, with tension in the choices and not in solving a mystery. It suits tables that enjoy a villain who is gentle, courteous, and completely wrong, and several endings that all feel earned. Tokens, portraits, maps, and handouts all come in one download, and the printable maps work at the table with miniatures.
What the Game Master should know
This is a rescue and not a mystery. Hulme does not lie. He will explain everything gladly, in the tone of a craftsman walking a customer through his process, and he is wrong in a way that cannot be argued down with facts. A party can end him with a sword, with an argument, or with a dead girl's crayon drawing. None of those is the good ending, and two of them are survivable.
Hulme has three states, Certain, Cracked, and Broken, and the evidence the party gathers moves him between them, so no persuasion roll decides whether the story's central argument lands. The toys only move in the gaps. The four kept children are awake inside their toy bodies, cannot speak, and never deal damage. The thing standing behind Hulme is a different problem: it does not believe anything, and it simply does not want to be left again.
The adventure runs through the Welcoming Room, the Gallery, the Marionette Hall, the Nursery, Hulme's Workroom, and the Playroom. The Gallery and the Marionette Hall can both be cut if you are short on time, and the book tells you what that costs. The Nursery is the room the adventure is built around: four children, six liars, and a stuffed owl that writes WE ARE STILL HERE on the wallpaper. There are several endings, a payoff, a hook for more, and one last soldier in the gutter.
FAQ
What level is this built for?
Levels 3-5 (ideally level 4), for 3-6 characters.
How long does it take to run?
About 4 hours if you cut the Gallery and the Marionette Hall, or about 5.5 hours uncut. It is built to run in one sitting.
Is this a mystery?
No, it is a rescue. Players will work out roughly what happened to the children well before the halfway point, and the adventure is built around that. The tension is in what the party decides to do about Ambrose Hulme.
Is it appropriate for my table? Is there a content note?
Yes, there is a content note, and the listing asks you to read it aloud to your table first. Children are hurt in this adventure and one died before it began. The transformation is written as wood, porcelain, stitching, and stiffening joints rather than blood, and no scene requires a child to suffer where the players can see it. The adventure includes advice for talking to your table first and for softening the kept children's experience.
What is included?
A 21-page adventure PDF with full-page painted part openers, eight battle maps (gridded and gridless), printable map PDFs at table scale, 14 bordered and 14 borderless top-down tokens, 16 framed portraits, prop and hazard tokens, five story handouts, four wall-writing cards, a printable player handout pack, a DM reference, painted scene art, stat blocks, and a one-page run sheet.
Can I print the maps?
Yes. The printable PDFs are tiled for US Letter paper at table scale, where one inch is one 5 ft square, with trim marks and tile labels. A separate full-page map pack puts each map on a single page.
Does it work on a virtual tabletop?
Yes. The tokens are top-down images you can use on Roll20, Foundry VTT, or any virtual tabletop, and every map comes gridded and gridless.
How do I get it?
It's an instant digital download through Etsy. No physical items are shipped.