Crawl from the Catacombs by Connor McCloskey is a role playing game supplement published by Black Gambeson for use with Shadowdark. This is a 0-level funnel.
The supplement is available as a 12-page PDF for free from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover and about half a page the Credits and Legal. There are also two png files, one a labelled GM’s map of the dungeon, the other an unlabelled players’ version.
You Are Dead… explains that the characters revive in a box after being dead and have to break out. Failing means they are trapped forever. Presumably no-one bothers to try and free trapped revived.
The Catacomb describes the catacomb in which the characters have revived in. It’s full of dangers, with the most common ones being nightgaunts. In the catacomb, characters can discover more recently revived, as well as, generally inadequate, clues to how this happened.
Epilogue: Escape to the Surface has the characters arriving in the town above where the recently raised are being attacked by the citizenry. The characters will need to go elsewhere.
Monsters has some new creatures to encounter.
Dungeon Details explains that this is a Level 0 Gauntlet and each player will need to create four characters, choosing one to run through, because many will die and they are supposed to. When a character is killed, a replacement is immediately used, and new characters if all are lost can be rolled up and arrive from a coffin. This section also explains the design and the background, which players may never find out and don’t need to know, which does make it irrelevant.
Wandering Encounters (Risky) has some wandering monsters.
Crawl from the Catacombs in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and has enough sections that these would have been useful. Navigation is okay. The text is mostly two column format and a number of errors were noticed. There are a number of illustrations, as well as the map, including one that’s full page.
This is a gauntlet which means it’s intended to be deadly and to kill off characters until one survives to the end, so players shouldn’t get attached to any, as it is unlikely they will get one character through every encounter. As such, it does its job. Crawl from the Catacombs can be downloaded for free by clicking here.
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