Mystery solved!
almost 2 years ago – Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 10:32:05 AM

I’m glad you’re all here, because I’m about to reveal something shocking. I found the person responsible for all of this, the real culprit.

IT WAS YOU. YOU DID IT. You made Psychic Trash Detectives a Kickstarter success.

Truly, thank you so so SO much for your pledges and support during our first ever Kickstarter campaign.

TWO. HOURS.

Your generous early pledges meant we hit our goal for the project within two hours of our launch. That’s an incredible feeling for a brand new collective like ours and defies all expectations we had for this project. You did that! You threw SO MUCH TRASH in the cans. Because of you, we not only get to make this zine, but we get to make it in style:

• Perfect-bound,
• With multiple extra illustrations,
• Full-color interior with high-end printing on deluxe paper,
• And a higher page count so we can include content from talented collaborators.

The stretchies

Because you pushed us through so many stretch goals, we’ll also be sending you a bonus: the Game Facilitator's Guide. The great thing about coming together as Scryptid Games is that each of us brought innovative ideas and approaches to the gaming table that inspired the rest of us. Those ideas were part of what made us realize we wanted to make games together and we want to share those things with you too.

To boot (a stinky old boot), we'll be adding a custom print-and-play coloring page AND throw a launch party later this year to celebrate the release of Psychic Trash Detectives. That will likely be somewhere on the East Coast of the United States, as the team here at Scryptid Games is in the EST time zone. We are excited to celebrate with you!

Makin' community

During the campaign, we ended up on the radar of publications like Polygon and Gizmodo, and we ended up on podcasts like Tabletopped and streams like GenCon TV’s Sarah’s Tableand Table Takes.

Hot on the heels of the Psychic Trash Detectives campaign, a party of Scryptids are headed to Unpub, a designer convention in Maryland! We'll be running a playtest of Psychic Trash Detectives on Saturday. Come say hi.

To hang out with us and keep up with all things Scryptid Games, head to our website and sign up for the mailing list. We promise not to spam your email (even though that would totally be a trashy move). Folks on the mailing list are the first to hear about new projects and products from us.

You can also pass our pre-order store on to your trash animal friends who missed the campaign!

State of the game

Moving forward we’ll be sure give you updates on how production and fulfillment are going. Psychic Trash Detectives is in final playtesting now, and we've already begun some initial typesetting work. Details on that from our production crew in a future update!

On the business side, we also wanted to let you know we're delegating the Scryptid Games Kickstarter account from one Scryptid to another. The campaign was originally built by Tiffany (thank you Tiffany!) but will now be managed by Patrick, who's heading up accounting and finances for our team.

This will clear the way for Tiffany, our typesetting and layout Scryptid, to focus on making Psychic Trash Detectives look and feel amazing as it becomes a real, live book!

Where we’re going we don’t need roads… 

But maybe we need toads? Unclear. Please stand by.

You can look forward to an amazing and innovative game with Psychic Trash Detectives and you can expect more projects and goodies from us in the future. We are just getting started.

You may also notice some cool things happening on our website, including launching our store filled with Psychic Trash Detectives and Scryptid Games clothes and merch! And yes, we are putting Soup and Mrs. Scratch and Pee-John and all the other adorable detectives on shirts and hoodies and everything else.

As a special treat, as a little thank you, we wanted to share with you a discount code for this brand-new online shop. Use TOUCHTRASH10 at checkout for 10% off everything, and get some trash animals in your life even before they make their way to you as part of the book.

Thanks again so very much from everyone here at Scryptid Games. Y'all made this project a huge success. We can't wait to bring this awesome game to you.

Sincerely, 

Nat, Pat, Brigitte, Dustin, and Tiffany 

48 hours left!
almost 2 years ago – Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 05:29:12 AM

Hello, trashy friend! Our campaign for Psychic Trash Detectives is almost over! There are only 48 hours left! This is your last chance to climb further into the dumpster with us and go on a slimy, smelly journey!

We are SO CLOSE to hitting the final $10,000 stretch goal. If we hit this mark before the end of the campaign, our illustrator, A.V.Eerie will create a custom print-and-play Psychic Trash Detectives coloring page! PLUS we’ll throw a big launch party that all of our backers are invited to! If you’ve never partied with a garbage bear, have you really ever partied?

Upgrading your pledge

There’s still a chance to upgrade your pledge so you can snag a Takeout Carton filled with old noodles! Okay maybe not with actual old noodles, but pledges at the Takeout Carton level get all the games included in the Creature Feature bundle as well as Nat Mesnard’s fabulous Ball of the Wild.

Head over to scryptidgames.com to sign up for our mailing list and to check out the Creature Feature bundle and the interviews with our team! 

You can also now add on cool stuff to your existing pledge! We’ve got stickers of your favorite trash animals and extra copies of the zine. If you’re anything like me, you’re going to mark your first copy all up and rip out pages and stuff. So you might want a backup copy. Also, we think PTD makes a great gift for that special nasty someone in your life.

Sincere thanks

Lastly, we’d like to take a second to thank YOU for your support so far, especially for sharing our project on social media. You stand in the garbage juice with notable folks like Jason with Gauntlet, Sarah over at Sarah’s Table, Nick at the TableTopped podcast,  Rhi from the Clever Corvids, the fine folks at 9th Level Games, and so many other weird creatures and creators in the indie community that have come through for us. THANK YOU!! *chittering noises*

We have seen firsthand the power of your recommendations and shout-outs. Keep it up! And if you haven’t shared the project yet, now is your chance to find out who in your circles is a secret trash animal!

Let’s make this happen, you filthy animals! Let's get to $10,000!

-Dustin

Stunned! All stretch goals reached, a new one on the horizon...
almost 2 years ago – Mon, Mar 06, 2023 at 08:11:39 AM

To our loyal community of trash animals: thank you!

With your support, we've achieved every stretch goal we set out to hit with this project. Now it's time to nose around in the garbage on the horizon, and receive visions of what's going to come next.

What's Unlocked

🐗 Goal 4: New Trash Friends! For each $1000 we earn past $6000, our artist will create a new trash friend or a scene of trash shenanigans to include in the final book! So far, we're at one brand new trash animal, and narrowing in on animal #2. Stay tuned for these amazing psychic detective illustrations, all created by the amazing A.V.Eerie. 

📓 Goal 5: Game Facilitator's Guide: Our $7,500 goal was to collaboratively author a Game Facilitator's Guide, and we're so excited that this is going to happen! This digital publication will contain anti-oppressive practices and structures for running inclusive, equitable TTRPG tables, and it will be provided to all backers at the Banana Peel tier and above. 

New Add Ons

Okay, you asked for it! We've got lots of fresh trash.

Stickers: The overwhelming outpouring of support for this campaign means we've got the resources to offer stickers of Mrs. Scratch the Raccoon and Pee John the Pigeon, as well as the existing Soup the Possum sticker we've been offering since Day 1. These deluxe stickers are $3 each, and are available to add onto your existing pledge!

Additional Copies: One of our generous backers suggested that we offer additional physical copies of Psychic Trash Detectives as an add-on so backers can give them as gifts. This is now available. Use them for gifts! Donate them to your local little free library! Roll around on them like some kind of TTRPG dragon! You do you!

New Stretch Goal 

And finally, we now have ambitions for the big one—hitting the five figure mark! 

🔒 $10,000 - Stretch Goal 7. We're throwin' a coloring party.  Our awesome artist A.V.Eerie. is excited to create an original trash animals coloring book page! All backers at the Gum Wrapper tier and above will get access to a print-and-play coloring book scene. In addition, this milestone will enable us to throw a Psychic Trash Detectives release party at a bookstore or event space in one of our East Coast Cities. We'll be demoing the game, coloring trash animals, and enjoying community with everyone who can make it! 

Polygon, Tabletopped, and Gen Con TV!
almost 2 years ago – Fri, Mar 03, 2023 at 12:20:17 PM

Polygon Loves Trash

O happy trashy day! Polygon included Psychic Trash Detectives in its roundup of Zine Quest 5.  "Whether it’s a blues dance LARP or a haunted recipe game," wrote Dan Arndt, "creativity was the theme for 2023." Here's what he had to say about Psychic Trash Detectives:

You see a lot of found objects used during Zine Month. Coins, sentimental pictures, bones. Brigitte Winter’s Psychic Trash Detectives asks what you could do with something we all have but probably don’t think to touch: trash.

Check out the full roundup here.

Podcasting with Tabletopped

One of our favorite podcasts about roleplaying games, Tabletopped Podcast, has been an amazing source of storytelling geekery and support throughout the Psychic Trash Detectives campaign! 

On Tabletopped each week, host Nick Perron dives deep into the art of running role-playing games with guests and experts, to get tips for everyone from first-time players to seasoned veterans.

The pod is celebrating its one year anniversary by rereleasing some classic episodes... including this one on writing interactive fiction with our very own Scryptid, Nat Mesnard! 

Plus, Psychic Trash Detectives designer Brigitte Winter will join Nick in April to talk about her creative process and writing a game about about trash.  Follow Tabletopped now so you don't miss that episode!

Psychic Trash Detectives on Gen Con TV

Actual play alert! A full two-part session of Psychic Trash Detectives will be streaming on the Gen Con TV Twitch show Sarah's Table just in time for this very Kickstarter campaign, and Part I goes live tonight. Tune in as we create psychic trash, imagine characters, and build a world of mystery for them to explore!

Friday, March 3

5 PM PT / 8 PM ET

https://www.twitch.tv/gencontv/

New trash friends 🐷
almost 2 years ago – Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 09:25:25 AM

Dear backers,

What an amazing campaign it's been so far. We've hit four stretch goals, seen lots of community love on social media (thanks to The Gauntlet for retweeting us!) and learned a ton about running a Zine Quest campaign as a collective. ✨ And the first chapter of this Kickstarter adventure isn't even over yet.

State of the Project

Since we hit Stretch Goal 4, we're very excited to be bringing you the bigger book version of Psychic Trash Detectives. This expanded edition of the game will even further align it with our ambitious vision of publishing storytelling games for people who love books. Therefore, we'll be giving the game an "anthology" vibe by including exclusive fiction by members of the Scryptid Games team, as well as folks in our Extended Universe of collaborators, colleagues, and friends—all set within the Psychic Trash Detectives world.

From here on out, we're looking at two more exciting stretch goals. One promises more art by our inimitable artist A.V.Eerie. For each $1000 we earn past $6000, she's agreed to create a new trash friend or a scene of trash shenanigans to include in the final book! We are obviously very excited about bringing to life more friends for Pee John, Soup, and Mrs. Scratch!

Plus, if we reach the $7000 mark, we're now scoping a companion digital project that all backers at the Banana Peel reward tier and above will receive a Game Facilitator's Guide. This book will be a guide to anti-oppressive practices and creative ideas for running inclusive, equitable TTRPG tables. From sparking creativity and group bonding, to shared ownership of characters, scenes, and the system, this guide will benefit from our 100 combined years of playing and facilitating tabletop games.

Creature Feature!

For the remainder of the campaign, we're going to be featuring each of the five brilliant creators behind Scryptid Games. This introduction to your Psychic Trash Detectives team will help you get to know our publishing collective, and learn each writer's unique personality and game design style.

Follow Scryptid Games on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to check out these mini-spotlights in the coming days! Or, you can grab the full Creature Feature bundle by upgrading your pledge to the Takeout Carton level, which gets you a set of 5 games, one by each creator, that we designed and published in time for the Psychic Trash Detectives campaign!