Things That Crawl

Things That Crawl is an RPG scenario for Lovecraftian investigative horror GUMSHOE games. 

Horror at a funeral -  a funeral ceremony is interrupted by screams of pain from within the shaking casket. An endless mass of maggots, cicadas, and roaches pour out onto the floor as the dead woman crawls out, begging for help. The player characters must hold on to their sanity and work together to uncover a legacy of rot in the streets of Boston. What will they sacrifice to ease the pain of the thing which was once their good friend?

Now anyone who was close friends with the woman is having unnatural symptoms - even things moving inside them. Can love from beyond the grave corrupt your soul? The player characters must unearth the truth to find the source of this curse, all the way back to the original progenitor's terrible pact with the things that crawl!

Content warning: insects, funerals, undead, body horror. Optionally: pregnancy.

Setting: 1930s Boston

Genre: Lovecraftian investigative horror

Format: PDF (35 pages)

This scenario is perfect for a 2-3 session adventure. There is advice in the appendix for using this scenario in the midst of a campaign or running it as a single-session one-shot.

Includes 2 handouts, 5 pre-generated characters, and a scene flowchart diagram to help GMs / keepers.

This scenario was 100% created by humans - no generative AI was used for writing or art.

Note on compatibility: This scenario uses rules from the GUMSHOE SRD. If you wish to play this scenario using other Cthulhu-based GUMSHOE games, you can easily convert it on the fly using common sense.