>>96760459
It definitely is. A CoC game isn't meant to be fighting otherworldly terrors all the time, it's about foiling cults of 90% man 10% fishman. You just grab the scary mythos creatures, the minor ones like Yithians, Mi-go, or Hounds of Tindalos to be whatever you want or you can make mundane creatures into other things, turn wolves into chupacabras or whatever.
>>96738706 (OP)
But this thread is (allegedly) about running a "Dark Academia" game, & FPBP is right, just use CoC. You already know you want low stakes, it's up to the GM to keep them low, make guns rare, make only low damage weapons available. I don't know much about Gumshoe so I won't comment, but CoC is purpose built for playing professors or students investigating weird cults.
Overall though you said you want to run a game & I respect that you're trying to run something instead of begging for a game to play. So what I think you should do is really make what the students are studying important to the adventure. The killer wrote a note in Latin or Ancient Greek as a clue, or used a certain poison or method of killing the target only a biology student would know. It helps reinforce the setting, it makes the players feel extra special & useful because no one else in the party has that knowledge & it can help them narrow down the killer even if they don't get the clue, because now they have a rough guess of where the killer could be found searching through the university's departments or enrolled students.
