I’ve long been a fan of Gumshoe and horror, so I was wildly excited when Scott Malthouse announced the release of The Terror Beneath (TTB), a Gumshoe Quickshock investigative roleplaying game of weird folk horror, published by Osprey Games.

The Terror Beneath

The game itself is built on the Gumshoe Quickshock rules, which, like Gumshoe “vanilla”, focuses on investigative RPGs, but this incarnation simplifies combat, “cardifies” Shock & Injury pools and removes investigative pools in favour of Pushes. Cardification is a new term that I’ve coined, meaning you receive cards that explain a condition the PC has and how to remove it. Too many cards of a type means death or madness.

It’s long been a favourite system of mine; via The Yellow King RPG, I enjoy the once-and-done combat and the removal of faff™️, i.e. tracking health, stability and investigative pools. But it keeps the core premise of Gumshoe: that it’s never interesting not to get a clue; the fun is in interpreting them.

The Arthur Machen-influenced folk horror setting is cleverly realised through two fleshed-out locations: London and rural Wales, giving GMs a wide variety of options in representing Machen’s world. Another simple but effective design decision was to create the Gold Tiberius Society, allowing the investigators a reason to be together and a common purpose. The society makes them capable investigators, fun to play, knowledgeable, skilful, and very much in line with a pulp ethic. I particularly like the Scarlet Map that society members pore over, a map of the United Kingdom with indications of the Veil incidents and Veil Bleed, areas where the supernatural is strong, breaking through into our world.

TTB expands Gumshoe Quickshock through the introduction of Veil Bleed, a location-based indication of how close the Veil is to breaking. This is indicated by the senses; the players never know the actual Bleed level. A higher level of Bleed allows more powerful spells to be cast, but can also strengthen creatures of the Veil. This combines mechanics and setting to really give a sense of place and a focus for scenarios. Clever stuff.

The remainder of the rules covers designing mysteries, key Bleed locations, a bestiary and an excellent scenario, Don’t Sleep. This is a fully realised setting and rule set that pays homage to Arthur Machen's work and shows a particular fondness for the weird and wild Welsh countryside.

I’m familiar with Arthur Machen, strangely, in the main through games: I've played a few one-shots inspired by him and playtested A Poison Tree, the great missing Trail of Cthulhu campaign from The Good Friends of Jackson Elias and, later, Gareth Hanrahan. I’ve found him a difficult writer to get into, loving the ideas and descriptions, but not always gelling with his storytelling; but the enthusiasm for his work and Folk Horror in general that Scott imbues means I’m starting to revisit his books. The White People is top of the pile.

Something Crawls Through

The scenario begins in Caerleon, near Newport, a Welsh town whose long history adds a lot of flavour to the adventure. Most of the action, however, takes place at Hawthorn House: a remote country estate, where the investigators meet Marcus and Lenora Hopper, a young couple whose daughter has disappeared against a background of earlier family tragedy.

From there, the investigators are free to search the house and its grounds for signs of what happened to the missing girl. The scenario provides some memorable Game Master Characters (GMCs) along the way; I particularly enjoyed Hetty, Lenora’s mother, with her piercing blue eyes and sinister demeanour. Without giving too much away, it gradually becomes apparent that something strange and voracious is haunting this place, and that time is running out.

The scenario establishes its mystery in simple prose before providing clear descriptions of the house’s key locations and a sequence of events counting down towards the final confrontation. Those concluding scenes are well described, but sufficiently loose to preserve player agency. The Game Master can move individual elements around, alter the order in which events occur or collapse them together to accelerate the mounting threat.

At its heart, this is a straightforward scenario built around a well-formed mystery, making it particularly effective as a one-shot. Its simplicity is a strength: the situation is easy to grasp, the investigation offers freedom without becoming unfocused, and the escalating events provide the Game Master with all the momentum needed to drive matters towards a memorable conclusion.

Something Crawls Through also captures the essence of Arthur Machen’s supernatural vision: the sense that the everyday world is merely a veil concealing an older, deeper and more intensely real existence. Contact with that hidden reality may prove miraculous, monstrous or fatal, depending upon how it is approached. Hawthorn House provides a wonderfully intimate stage upon which that veil can be torn aside, and the horrors bleed through into the real world.

I would have loved a plan of the house, but it’s easier to pull together an example through judicious use of Google; here is just one example.

This scenario is a free release from Scott on his itch.io site; you can download it here.

Overall, I heartily recommend both The Terror Beneath and Something Crawls Through. Together, they offer an excellent introduction to Machen’s supernatural world while making clever use of a much-loved investigative RPG. I certainly intend to step beyond the Veil again, beginning with the scenario included in the core rules, Don’t Sleep.