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FAQ
What sort of game is this?
Ashbrook is a private, invite-only horror-mystery roleplay. Characters will find themselves drawn into the town of Ashbrook, circa 1995, only to discover that people who bear their names, faces, and mannerisms already live there. What's more, these people seem to have vanished, and now the residents of Ashbrook believe that these new Visitors are those people.
Ashbrook will have a strong focus on the themes of existential horror and paranoia. The game draws inspiration from UFO conspiracies, cryptid folklore, and media like the X-Files, Twin Peaks, Gravity Falls, and Alan Wake.
Who's invited?
• Friends of the moderators have an automatic invite at any time.
• Anyone currently in the game may invite one additional player every month.
Details on invitations can be found here.
Please note that all invitations, regardless of the origin, are contingent on good player behavior and subject to moderator review. We may rescind an invite at any time if we feel the invited player is not a good fit for the game.
What sorts of characters are allowed?
• Canon characters, including fictionalized versions of historical and mythological figures, malleable protagonists, and canon AUs
• Original characters from original worlds
• Fandom OCs from tabletop games and MMORPGs, though these will be approved on a case-by-case basis
Even in cases where multiple versions of a character could exist (e.g.: Commander Shepard, Persona protagonists, the Warrior of Light) only one will be permitted in the game at a time. Exceptions for significant differences between two different canons (e.g.: Leonardo da Vinci in Assassin's Creed vs. Leonardo da Vinci in Fate/Grand Order, certain comic characters) will be made on a case-by-case basis.
How many characters can I play?
You may play up to 3 characters, and app 1 character per round.
Is there an IC age limit?
No, but characters under the age of 15 must fill out an additional suitability section on the application.
Is this an AU game?
No. All player characters - called Visitors - will be taken directly from canon with all of their canon memories intact, as-in a classic jamjar setup.
However, the residents of Ashbrook will not view the Visitors as transplants from another world. Instead, Visitors will discover that someone with their name, mannerisms, and appearance has been living in Ashbrook for multiple years now - and that they (the Visitors) appear to have replaced this person entirely. Visitors will have an instinctive understanding of some parts of this person's life, but no concrete memories or details. Make sure you give the roles and employment page a thorough read to make sure you understand the mechanic.
How important are the Visitor's alternate lives?
While Ashbrook is not an AU game, how player characters react to being forced to fill in a life that's almost-but-not-actually their own is a major theme of the game. Residents of Ashbrook will recognize the Visitors and have assumptions about the type of people they are. Their experiences, credentials, and background will impact how NPCs react to them, the connections they have, and the sort of lifestyle they can maintain.
The Setting
What is the town like?
Ashbrook is a small town in the mountains in north-central Washington state. With a population of just 15 thousand people, Ashbrook would be a relatively sleepy town if not for its bustling tourism industry. While the town itself is not especially interesting, it's nestled in a valley between Mount MacLachlan and Cinder Lake, with national forests on all sides and the Ontkean River flowing right through the middle of downtown. This has made it a popular destination for all manner of outdoor sports. Skiing is undoubtedly the main draw, but the ample opportunities for hiking, camping, fishing, kayaking, and hunting have made it a reasonably popular destination year round.
The popularity of skiing has, in turn, made Ashbrook an appealing location for the second homes of wealthy doctors, lawyers, CEOs and so on. Thus, the town is able to both culturally and economically support more institutions and establishments - like the community college and the shopping mall - than its population would normally allow. It helps that it's the largest town in the county, of course.
This is one more funny little thing about Ashbrook: the frequency of supernatural incidents. Ashbrook is a hotspot for UFO, ghost, and cryptid sightings. People interested in seeing any of the above make up a not insignificant portion of the town's tourists, and a not insignificant number of the town's residents have capitalized on that interest. How much the actual residents buy into these stories varies. Some are passionate believers, others are fierce skeptics, and most fall somewhere in between.
What is the technology like?
Like it's 1995! Plasma TVs are the up-and-coming home technology, readily available to those with plenty of cash to spare. There's this new thing called the World Wide Web, and it's gotten even easier to access (at a whopping 56kb/s! Wow!) with this new program called Netscape Navigator. Cellphones are clunky hunks of plastic, CDs recently overtook cassette tapes in popularity, VHS still rules the home video market, the government has yet to mandate airbags in all new vehicles...
You get the idea.
Is there a network?
Sort of. Upon reaching their homes, Visitors will find, whether it's on their computer or physically written somewhere in their home, a web address for the Ashbrook Visitors Center forums. When the game starts the forum will be empty. At the top of the front page is a pinned message:
Hello, Visitors, and welcome to the Ashbrook Visitors Center forums.
Upon opening the website, Visitor's will find themselves already logged in to an account.
The AVC forums are a primarily text-based website, though it is possible to upload low quality images. This is the closest the setting has to the traditional jamjar network.
It's not the only way to communicate, however! Phones, pagers, email, walkie-talkies, and snail mail are all options. Just keep in mind that mobile options like phones and pagers have incredibly poor reception outside city limits; and walkie-talkies only have a range of a few miles. Longer-range radios like those used by National Park Service employees exist, but they're incredibly expensive.
Do powers work?
Only sometimes. At first it won't be obvious why powers don't work. Characters that never leave the city center may think their powers are all but completely gone, while those that never go beyond the boundaries of the suburbs may think they're permanently reduced.
It's not until characters venture beyond the boundaries of civilization, into the woods and up the mountain, that they'll realize the truth: the more townsfolk that are around, the weaker their powers are.
More details on powers and the dynamic nerfing mechanic can be found here.
What about magic artifacts and sci-fi technology?
Much like powers, magic and sci-fi items will be subjected to dynamic nerfing and the veil of normalcy over the town. A magic staff and a laser pistol will be rendered useless, and the townsfolk will perceive the former as a simple walking stick and the latter as a regular pistol or toy.
What about pets and summons, like Pokemon and Personas?
Again, these will be subjected to dynamic nerfing. Summoned creatures will be anywhere from difficult or impossible to manifest. Pokemon and the like will stick around, but everyone will perceive them as normal animals, or perhaps even people. Bulbasaur will be a big lizard, Ponyta will be a normal horse, and Mr. Mime will seem to be a literal mime.
What about characters with no canon powers?
Good news: they can learn new ones! Ashbrook may seem normal on the surface, but there's plenty of strange things going on. Characters will have the opportunity to learn new powers unique to the setting.
More details on setting-specific powers can be found here.
Life In Ashbrook
So what's with these AU lives?
As mentioned, each Visitor will discover that they're not the first person with their name, face, and mannerisms to exist in Ashbrook. Someone else, a sort of alternate version of themselves, has an entire life established in the city with their own friends, family, enemies, job, habits, and so on. Filling in for this person that they've replaced will be the first challenge a Visitor faces upon arriving in Ashbrook - and it's a challenge they can expect to deal with the entire time they're here.
How are roles decided?
The mod team will assign your character a role and background based on a short survey in the application.
What sort of setting-specific lives can our characters have?
Though Ashbrook is small, it's popular as both a tourist destination and a second home location for the wealthy, and the local college has a fair reputation for its academics and an excellent ice hockey team. Thus, nearly any sort of job or role can be found in the town. Office, retail, and blue collar workers, civil servants, doctors, lawyers, police officers, students, local religious leaders, artists, reporters, the list goes on.
More details on the Ashbrook 'AUs' can be found here.
My character is underage. Do they have to be a student?
Yes, but all students - elementary through college - will be assigned both the 'student' role and an additional role appropriate for their age and character. They may be the president of a school club, have a job, play sports, or be otherwise involved in the community, but they'll never be solely a student.
Do I have to play out my character attending school and going to work?
Absolutely not. While Visitor's pre-assigned lives are a significant component of the setting, they are not intended to be the focus of the actual threads. A Visitor's pre-game life in Ashbrook may be used as set dressing, a method of CR networking, or a source of friction between them and the setting, but we will never require players to write a single sentence of chatting over the watercooler or studying for a test.
Do I have to stick with my character's assigned role?
You don't! Once characters have figured things out they can change jobs, start their own business, go back for another degree, or even quit entirely to live off their savings.
The mods have opted to not place any restrictions on the process of changing roles for the time being. We only ask that players be reasonable about the speed and nature of these changes. Their new roles should always be something that would be achievable in a mid-90s town in America. An 18-year-old high school senior isn't going to graduate and immediately start practicing medicine, even if they were a doctor back home.
Can I add details to the background my character was assigned?
This is not only allowed, but encouraged! The backgrounds provided by the mods will be a loose framework to allow players to add details as they see fit. You aren't required to figure out everything else right away, either. You can 'retcon' in new details to your AU background as needed.
Please see the roles page for more details.
Does my character have to work / go to school?
They probably should! There is no game-wide stipend or free resources. A steady paycheck is necessary to pay rent and buy groceries. The townsfolk are surprisingly lenient with absences and tardiness, but Visitors will get fired eventually. Similarly, truant students, will be reprimanded by the school administrators or even law enforcement
Outside of the unrelenting pressures of capitalism, though, there's nothing forcing characters to work.
Are non-human characters humanized?
Mostly no, though there are some exceptions.
Characters too small or too large to function within a human-scale city (e.g.: Transformers characters, Smaug from the Hobbit, Basil from Great Mouse Detective) are required to scale up or down to fit the city. Megatron can still be a robot, Smaug can still be a dragon, and Basil can still be a mouse, but they will be correctly sized to easily fit through doors, operate cars, and so on.
Characters with forms too inconvenient to easily function in a human city (e.g.: Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars, GLaDOS from Portal, Smaug again) may be partially humanized at the player's discretion.
Characters whose forms do not impede their ability to function within a city will not be humanized at all. Miqo'te, Faunus, and other kemonomimi-style fantasy races will retain their animal features; Vulcans and elves will still have pointy ears; Jake Sully will still be blue; Sonic the Hedgehog and Rocket Raccoon will still be a bipedal hedgehog and raccoon; etc.
Some characters aren't human, have names from non-human cultures, dress in fantasy or sci-fi clothing, or otherwise look out of place in a normal 90s town. Don't the townsfolk notice?
They sure don't. They'll look right over extra body parts like horns and tails and ignore bizarre clothing and hairstyles. Trying to bring it to their attention doesn't help; if they don't treat it like a joke they'll treat it like being rude. Even completely non-human characters like Autobots and Sonic the Hedgehog won't register as anything but human.
Can Visitors notice things out of the ordinary about other Visitors?
They can. Outside of specific events, Visitors are always able to see non-human or strangely dressed Visitors for what they are.
How do Visitors identify other Visitors?
Outside of being told or seeing a clearly non-human character, there are no immediate or easy ways for Visitors to identify one another.
However, only Visitors have access to the Visitors Center Forums and can use that connection to coordinate and share their identities. In addition, Visitors will sometimes be the only ones able to notice certain strange events or occurrences in the town, and their reactions to these events can make their identity obvious to other Visitors.
My character wants to destroy the town / go on a murder spree / force the townsfolk to see the truth / quit trying to live a normal life in Ashbrook. Can they?
Again, there's no mysterious force at play preventing characters from doing any of that. The townsfolk are surprisingly resistant from noticing the strange and unusual but it is possible to break past that. This is especially true if characters isolate townsfolk before revealing themselves.
Just be careful! The townsfolk will defend themselves when attacked and panic when exposed to things that are too weird. Not to mention that anything supernatural is said to attract the attention of the men in black.
The men in black?
That's right. This term might be familiar to any characters from the latter half of the 20th century in the United States, and the role they play is the same: mysterious men in black suits who are said to show up at the site of UFO sightings, cryptid encounters, and other sorts of strange occurrences. The men in black are a mysterious group whose very existence is up for debate, and rumors assert that they do everything from gathering information to making witnesses disappear.
What happens if a character is taken by the men in black?
That's a good question! No one from the town has been taken (yet), and thus the Visitors can't even be sure if the men in black are real or an urban legend. Trying to ask the townsfolk for information will get them everything ranging from derision (from the skeptics) to hushed and wildly conflicting warnings (from the believers).
OOCly, please note that being taken by the men in black is a severe IC consequence, on par with a character dying. If your character does something that attracts the attention of the men in black, you must report it here.
Can my characters avoid the men in black?
To an extent. Characters that are careful to only ever use their powers around fellow Visitors will never attract the attention of the men in black. Even those that do can get away with a fair number of minor slipups. For example, if a Visitor uses a highly-diminished magic spell in the middle of the diner, the townsfolk may instead assume they're seeing a magic trick from a magician.
Largely, we will leave it to player discretion whether or not a certain act will attract their attention. So long as it's not an act that's impossible to cover up (like major destruction to part of the town) players are not required to have their character face being taken.
Gameplay
How long will the game run?
Currently, the mod team expects the game to run for 1-3 years. There are several possible endgame scenarios and several routes through which to reach each of them. IC choices made during certain events will be the primary factor influencing the game's trajectory and duration.
How many items can my character arrive with?
On their person, characters may have anything they were carrying at their chosen canon point, including weapons and pets, without any permanent changes to those objects.
At their home, characters may have anything they owned in canon, regardless of when they owned it or where it is at their canon point. Anything that wouldn't be impossible by 1990s standards - clothing, books, mundane weapons, photographs, pets, and so on - will not undergo any changes. On the other hand, objects not on their person that would be impossible by the standards of the mid-90 will be replaced by a 1995 equivalent.
Rather than a giant robot, characters from a mech anime might have a car with a similar paint job. A mad scientist could find all of their death rays replaced with illegally modded but otherwise mundane firearms. A Pokemon trainer may discover that instead of a PC storing their extra pokemon, they now live on a farm or wildlife rescue housing a variety of perfectly normal animals. Even a smartphone will end up converted to an old Nokia brick or Motorola flip phone.
What's the newsletter?
OOCly, the newsletter is posted at the end of every month, giving players a preview of the weather, events, tone, and minor occurrences throughout the town.
ICly, the newsletter will be pulled from various sources. The two primary sources will be Inkveil, the monthly community newspaper produced by Marshall, and Strange Tides, an illegal radio broadcast hosted by Vanya J. Tides, but information from the police blotter, rumors on the street, and other newspaper, radio, and TV broadcasts may also be included.
Can I investigate the town outside of events?
You can. Each month, every character will be able to submit a request for one investigation. The mods will respond based on their submission.
Please note that investigation results will be simple prompts meant to encourage CR development. While we may provide hints and clues relating to the setting, backstory, or plot, all major reveals and developments will be saved for events accessible to all players.
You can read more about investigations over here.
Can I thread with NPCs?
No, but you can sometimes get custom reactions from them via investigations. Until then, the NPC page has descriptions of the NPCs' personalities and default interactions you can expect from them. So long as you stay within the outline we provide, you're allowed and encouraged to develop your character's relationship with the NPCs as you see fit.
For example: Your character is pursuing a degree in anthropology with a focus on folklore. They spend a lot of time studying in the Flying Saucer. You're free to assume that your character develops a good relationship with Marshall due to being both a regular customer and a regular conversation partner.
Is death permanent?
It is not. However, death is intended to be severe and has escalating consequences for each subsequent death.
Details can be found here.
How do hiatuses work?
Hiatuses have three option: characters can be be on autopilot; vanish under mysterious circumstances for the duration of their hiatus; or spend the duration of their hiatus without their canon memories, believing that they're actually their Ashbrook counterpart.
More information about hiatuses can be found here.
How do drops work?
Much like for a hiatus, a dropped character will suddenly forget their life in canon and instead wholly believe that they're a true resident of Ashbrook. Furthermore, they will gradually become more and more unrecognizable to their CR, and will completely forget them as well.
More information about hiatuses can be found here.
I found some random letters in one of the mod posts?
How strange! Maybe you should share what you found with the other players? And don't forget to report it to the 'discoveries' comment on next month's newsletter!
Don't see an answer you need? Be sure to read over our ANSWERED PLAYER QUESTIONS page! If you still don't see what you need, feel free to ask below!