Tune in for Golden Good Girls!
5 days ago
– Fri, Jul 26, 2024 at 09:24:59 AM
Dearest Trash Comrades,
We’ve got big news! Treasure yoinked from the deepest corner of the dumpster! And we want YOU to be the first to know.
Scryptid Games is launching a Kickstarter next month for a new game set in the Psychic Trash Detectives universe: Brigitte Winter’s Golden Good Girls!
We’ll be reserving a stash of special rewards for early backers, so follow the Golden Good Girls Backerkit pre-launch page and be the first to know when this project launches! 
Golden Good Girls is a stand-alone TTRPG about a tight-knit group of “un-adoptable” senior shelter animals living their best lives together at the local shelter, Shady Pines!
Collaborate with your friends to build the sitcom world of Shady Pines and the paw-inspiring characters who live there. Step into a flashback episode where you reminisce about the times you and your fellow fuzzballs shared, and resolve challenges with stupid human tricks like making goofy faces and eating crackers without your hands.
You’ll even earn real treats for successful tricks! Each player brings a stash of shareable treats to the table that will serve as narrative lures to drive the story forward, resolve challenges, and inspire immersive play.
Like Psychic Trash Detectives, Golden Good Girls is a replayable, single-session, shared-GM game for 3-5 players that explores themes of chosen family and finding value in the communities the rest of the world has discarded. But while Psychic Trash Detectives uses pulp mystery tropes as the inspiration for storytelling, Golden Good Girls pulls from the treasure trove of nostalgic sitcom tropes and touchstones.
So gather your favorite people and your favorite treats, and explore the angst and the antics of day-to-day life at Shady Pines!
Stay golden, friends!
See you in August…
Last day to vote! Psychic Trash Detectives is a Finalist for TWO CRIT Awards!
25 days ago
– Sat, Jul 06, 2024 at 07:56:35 AM
CRIT Awards Voting Closes July 7
Voting for the CRIT Awards closes July 7th, so today is the last full day to vote for Psychic Trash Detectives for Best Indie TTRPG and Best Cover Art!
The Creator Recognition in TTRPG (CRIT) Awards celebrate and recognize the contributions and achievements of the TTRPG community by shining a light on the talent, creativity, and hard work of our community members.
Being selected as a Finalist is already an amazing honor for Scryptid Games, Psychic Trash Detectives designer Brigitte Winter, cover illustrator Ava Eerie, and the growing community of weirdos who love this game (i.e. all of you!)
If you’ve already voted, THANK YOU for your support. And if you haven’t had a chance to vote yet, we hope you’ll take a moment today to vote for Psychic Trash Detectives for Best Indie TTRPG and Best Cover Art and then spread the word about the awards within your communities!
Scryptid Games has a Discord server!
Want to play, create, and talk about games with other folks who love indie TTRPGs as much as you do?
We’re excited to announce that Scryptid Games is now on Discord!
Join the Scryptid Games Extended Universe and be the first to hear about upcoming Scryptid Games publications, game jams, events, and other fun opportunities for community, creativity, and connection.
Are you tired of owning indie TTRPGs that you never play? Do you want to connect with other gamers? Do you need one more reason to hang out at No Land Beyond in Baltimore? Well, come on out to Indie TTRPG Book Club! You can join the group on Facebook here.
Our first meeting will be July 21st at 6pm!
Indie TTRPG Community Book Club is a public gaming group that meets on a monthly basis to play and discuss indie tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs). At each of our meetings, we will play a short session of a different indie TTRPG and then reconvene as a group to share our thoughts, both on the RPG as a book and game, and on how the session went. This is a great way to get to know other gamers, play new games, or explore what TTRPGs are and what potential they hold for storytelling.
In between meetings, you’ll have time to get your hands on the next month’s game, read or play as much of it as you like, and then come to the next meeting ready to discuss. If you’ve ever been part of a normal book club, this is a lot like that.
Our First Book
The first book we will discuss is Viva La Queer Bar by Sandra Dahlhoff and Andrea Rick. Happy Pride! You can find the on Facebook event here.
The Game
Viva la QueerBar is a slice-of-life story game about a queer bar (or queer café) and the team who runs it. It's a game about the pleasures and struggles of being part of a queer community.
Whether as a fantasy medieval tavern, a cyberpunk underground club, a real-world gay bar in a historical setting, an intergalactic queer bar on a spaceship, or anything else you can think of – the QueerBar lives wherever you want it to.
To play, you’ll need a PDF or print copy of Viva La Queer Bar, a regular deck of 52 playing cards, and 1-5 people to play with you. No preparation necessary – just start playing!
Viva la QueerBar welcomes players of all genders, orientations, and skill levels who are willing to take on the perspective of a queer character for the duration of the game. Since this is a story game more than a role-playing game, however, you will spend more time describing your character's thoughts, feelings, and actions than you will acting as your character.
In 2023, the German version of Viva la QueerBar won a Crystal Stephan Award for Best Role-Playing Game in the "Goldener Stephan" (Public Choice Award for Escapism, Nerd Culture, and Fantasy).
You can find copies of Viva La Queer Bar from itch.io, the Plotbunny Games website, or (possibly) your local game store:
Please note: the Plotbunny website defaults to German language. If you are using Google Chrome, the browser should automatically translate for you, but if it doesn’t, you can right-click anywhere on the site and select Translate to English from the menu.
See you there!
We need your vote! Psychic Trash Detectives is a Finalist for TWO CRIT Awards!
about 1 month ago
– Thu, Jun 20, 2024 at 06:18:05 AM
Big news! Psychic Trash Detectives, our trashy little game that could, is a Finalist for TWO CRIT Awards!
The Creator Recognition in TTRPG (CRIT) Awards celebrate and recognize the contributions and achievements of the TTRPG community by shining a light on the talent, creativity, and hard work of community members.
Psychic Trash Detectives is a CRIT Awards Finalist for both Best Indie TTRPG and Best Cover Art!
What an incredible honor for Scryptid Games, Psychic Trash Detectives designer Brigitte Winter, cover illustrator Ava Eerie, and the growing community of weirdos who love this game (i.e. all of you!)
These awards are community-nominated, which means enough of YOU plucked this game from the garbage to earn us Finalist status. We are so very grateful.
If you love this game as much as we do, we hope you’ll take a moment to vote for Psychic Trash Detectives for Best Indie TTRPG and Best Cover Art, and to then spread the word about the awards within your communities. Voting closes July 7th, and the winners will be announced at GenCon the first weekend in August.
At its heart, this game is about a chosen family building community together and finding value in the beings and objects that others have discarded. It’s about the power that comes from accepting your weird self and the other weirdos all around you.
Scryptid Games is a collective of 100% queer creators, and it feels incredibly meaningful for a game like this to be nominated for a popular award.
As Brigitte wrote in the game book’s dedication: “This book is dedicated to the outsiders: the discarded, the misunderstood, and the unseen.”
For all of you who connect with that statement, this award nomination is for you!
“May we all heap together and create a real stink.”
New trashy content!
3 months ago
– Sun, May 12, 2024 at 10:20:56 AM
Meet the Psychic Trash Detectives Contributing Poets
We are excited to share our latest exclusive Psychic Trash Detectives content with you!
Psychic Trash Detectives contributing writers Tonee Mae Moll, Tristan B Willis, Tyler Vile, and jason b. crawford joined Scryptid Games Co-Founder Nat Mesnard to read poems, talk about meaningful gaming experiences, and generally geek out about the fun intersection of TTRPGs, poetry, and imaginative fiction.
We had so much fun collaborating with these brilliant writers to create Junked Histories, the anthology of poetry and fiction that accompanies the Psychic Trash Detectives game book.
You can watch a full playlist of these interviews and poetry readings on YouTube.
Pre-order Against the Gloom!
It’s been a few months since we closed our latest Kickstarter campaign and got to work producing Against the Gloom, and we are pleased to share that the game is now available for pre-order on Backerkit.
What if our heroes exchanged their battle axes for Stratocasters? And what if lyrics and harmony were actual magic? Against the Gloom is a dice-based, role-playlist-building game about the joy and power of music, chosen family, and building community in the face of the void. Players take on the roles of punk pirate troubadours sailing across a vast and dangerous void—the Gloom—aboard a ramshackle ship propelled by the power of song. Use your character's sonic powers to build your story one gig at a time!
The designer of Psychic Trash Detectives, Brigitte Winter, collaborated with Against the Gloom's lead designer, Dustin Patrick Winter, on this game.So if you enjoyed the style and feel of Psychic Trash Detectives’ emphasis on compelling story, delightful weirdness, and creative and harmonious game mechanics, we think you’ll love Against the Gloom. You'll even get to build and play a collaborative playlist as a central game mechanic, earning and spending songs to maintain your band's harmony.
Be a rockstar and pre-order your copy of the game book before it drops this fall, and then add a pack of oversized custom Gloom dice and an Against the Gloom concert tee to your order while you’re at it.
In case you missed it…
Brigitte recently appeared on the Epic Levels Mad Dungeon podcast. Check out the episode to listen to a fun conversation about games, music, Against the Gloom, and the contents of podcast hosts Dragon Warrior and Tiger Wizard's trash cans.
New Scryptid Games Website
We’ve made some Scryptid upgrades! We have a new Shopify website, which will make it a ton easier to manage our digital storefront.
Check out the new site and browse our growing collection of TTRPGs and story games.
TTRPG book club, Scryptid Discord, and the next Scryptid Games Kickstarter Campaign, oh my!
We are about to launch some cool new projects.
Are you tired of owning TTRPGs that you never play? Do you want to connect with other gamers? Come out to Indie TTRPG Community Book Club!
Dustin is talking with No Land Beyond in Baltimore about starting a monthly gathering to play and discuss indie games. We’ll update you as soon as we schedule our first meeting. Once we get our Baltimore group going, we’ll be exploring a New York City TTRPG book club and a virtual club that meets on Discord.
Speaking of Discord…
Tiffany is creating a Discord community for our Extended Scryptid Universe (i.e. all of you!) Join us when it launches to talk about games, play games, make games, and generally nerd out with other great folks who love the things you do.
By joining our Discord, you’ll also be the first to know about our upcoming game projects, including a new game we’re Kickstarting later this summer…
Stay tuned for more details as these projects develop.
Until next time, stay trashy, friends!
Roll dice. Build your playlist. Shred the Gloom. Against the Gloom just launched on Kickstarter!
6 months ago
– Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 12:41:53 PM
Greetings, trashy friends and detectives!
In case you missed it, on Valentine’s Day we launched our next project as Scryptid Games: Against the Gloom!
What if our heroes exchanged their battle axes for Stratocasters? And what if lyrics and harmony were actual magic? Against the Gloom is a dice-based, role-playlist-building game about the joy and power of music, chosen family, and building community in the face of the void. Players take on the roles of punk pirate troubadours sailing across a vast and dangerous void—the Gloom—aboard a ramshackle ship propelled by the power of song. Use your character's sonic powers to build your story one gig at a time!
The designer of Psychic Trash Detectives, our own Brigitte Winter, is collaborating with the lead designer, Dustin Patrick Winter (yup, they’re married), on Against the Gloom. So if you enjoyed the style and feel of Psychic Trash Detectives’ emphasis on compelling story, delightful weirdness, and creative and harmonious game mechanics, we think you’ll love Against the Gloom. You'll even get to build and play a collaborative playlist as a central game mechanic, earning and spending songs to maintain your band's harmony.
Gloom funded in less than two hours and is already climbing quickly toward its stretch goals. And some of the rewards include cool and unique stuff we’ve never offered before!
- A “tour” t-shirt, featuring our backers’ hometowns (or maybe their own fictional worlds?) as tour stops!
- Custom dice depicting the creepy Gloom swirl and fun musical elements!
- Incredible art by Jupiter V, Gigi Wilder, and hopefully more!
And could there be actual music on the horizon? Only one way to find out! Rumor has it, one of our secret stretch goals may be a mixtape of original music inspired by the game...
We hope you’ll support this game with the same love and generosity with which you supported Psychic Trash Detectives.
So grab a line, swing on over to our Kickstarter, and climb aboard for the wild ride, you sonic scalawags! Against the Gloom is funding until March 15.
Answering the calls across the void…
As our campaign for Against the Gloom progresses, we’d really love your help with spreading the word about it. Scryptid Games is very new as an entity, kind of a scrappy underdog even in the indie space, and we don’t always have the power to get word out about our projects.
If you back Gloom, please spread the word about it! Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and BlueSky, and share why you think it’s cool! Brag about your largesse! Gloat about how you’re best friends with us! But truly, word of mouth goes a long way.
Is she secretly an octopus?
As if she wasn’t doing enough, Brigitte is also working on her other next big project: the juggernaut that is New Year, New You, an anthology of speculative fiction stories about the joys and costs of reinvention. Forged in the furnaces of the Viable Paradise workshop, and featuring work by the 2023 workshop attendees and author-instructors, New Year, New You will feature one of Brigitte’s most incendiary stories, never before published.
Brigitte has been helping to make the anthology a reality on the publishing side of the project as well, and everything is going great there too! So check that Kickstarter. We’re not quite sure how she does it all!
