Against the Gloom fulfillment update!
4 months ago
– Sun, Nov 03, 2024 at 06:03:25 PM
Hey, Gloomfarers! Nat here, your resident Operations Scryptid, with a brief update on our very imminent fulfillment for Against the Gloom 🎸
Books En Route
As of this week, Dustin has picked up the print run from our local Maryland printer, and the Against the Gloom books are in the mail to my place in NYC, which is where we'll be doing fulfillment.
The moment the books arrive, I'll be sending out your orders, because everything else is here and ready to go...including our swirly purple, music-themed Gloom Dice for all who ordered them!
I hope to be getting packages in the mail as soon as next week, depending on when the books arrive. I'm lucky to be attending Metatopia, a game designer conference, on November 8-10, so any packages that don't go out before I leave town will be mailed early the following week.
As usual, international orders may take a bit longer than usual, so please be patient with the post, and let me know if we hit December and you still don't see your order.
Digital Happening Now
All PDFs are ready to go! We've done our usual high-quality pass on the Against the Gloom digital to make it accessible and screen reader friendly. I'll be sending out digitals to everyone who's completed their surveys as soon as I'm done writing this backer update. Look in your email inbox for your downloads.
Don't Forget Your Survey
As of this writing, there are still a number of people who haven't filled out their surveys. Could this be you? Check your spam folder for messages from Scryptid Games & BackerKit if you don't remember seeing one. We can't send you your reward if you don't fill this out!
That's it for now. There are tons of exciting things happening right now for Scryptid Games, including a glorious Against the Gloom launch party yesterday at No Land Beyond in Baltimore, plus plans in the works for fun at PAX Unplugged. As always, you can follow us @scryptidgames on Instagram for those updates!
Rock on. We can't wait to get you these books.
— Nat
Mixtapes and Mail
5 months ago
– Sat, Oct 05, 2024 at 08:33:56 AM
Sailing off to the printer!
First, we are pumped to share that Against the Gloom is headed to the printer!! This gorgeous book is finally ready for you, and we can’t wait to send it your way. We’ll be emailing game PDFs mid-October and fulfilling your physical books and other rewards at the end of the month. U.S. backers should expect to receive their packages in early November, and international backers will receive theirs soon after.
To make this possible, we will be locking orders on Backerkit and charging cards October 9th. That means you have a few more days to complete your Backerkit surveys (check your spam filters if you haven’t seen yours), update your mailing address, and include any new add-ons with your order. Check out the Against the Gloom tour t-shirts, gloom dice, and other rocking add-ons on Backerkit.
In the meantime, get excited about this gorgeous layout by Andrew Sargus-Klein, Tonee Mae Moll, and Nat Mesnard.
With illustrations by Sarah Gavagan.
Get ready to build your character.
And fight the gloom!
The official Against the Gloom Mixtape is here!
In other exciting news, the Against the Gloom Mixtape is live on YouTube. We’ll share this link again when we fulfill this Kickstarter later this month, but the Scryptids have been playing these songs on repeat all week, so we needed to share the joy.
The official playlist includes:
Endless Wave by Jupiter V and Minus World
Against the Gloom by Epic Levels
(We Fight) Against the Gloom by Unicorn Dogs
Against the Gloom by Unicorn Dogs
As We Sail by The Hipwrecks
Are You Okay by Aven Gonzales
Blast Off by Bard City
We are grateful to have so many talented artists in the extended Scryptid universe. And we are grateful to YOU for making this dream project possible. Thanks to your support, we’ve not only been able to design and publish a TTRPG project that celebrates music, that TTRPG has inspired actual music by indie artists who love the same nerdy stuff we do.
Golden Good Girls is available for preorder on Backerkit!
Did you miss the Golden Good Girls Kickstarter campaign in August? GOOD NEWS. The game is now available for preorder on Backerkit.
Inspired by the sitcom Golden Girls, Golden Good Girls is a replayable, single-session, shared-GM TTRPG for 3-5 players about a tight-knit group of “un-adoptable” senior shelter animals living their best lives together at the local shelter, Shady Pines. Collaborate 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 and resolve challenges. This is a stand-alone game, but the characters live in the same universe as the characters in Scryptid Games’s 2023 release, Psychic Trash Detectives.
So gather your favorite people and your favorite treats, and explore the angst and the antics of day-to-day life at Shady Pines!
Until next time, Gloomfarers. Rock on!
New music! New Design! New Kickstarter!
7 months ago
– Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 11:06:24 AM
Greetings, Gloomfarers!
We are thrilled to report that layout for Against the Gloom is just about done, and we are still on schedule to send your books in October!
The book is even more beautiful than we could have imagined, thanks layout artists Tonee Mae Moll and Andrew Sargus Klein, and to the gorgeous illustrations we received from artist Sarah Gavagan. We can’t wait for you to flip through these pages.
Songs for our Against the Gloom mixtape are also beginning to roll in with the tide.
Check out these two contributions from Unicorn Dogs! We’ll share more song previews as our musician collaborators continue to post their songs to Spotify.
What's next?
We are also thrilled to share that we just launched our next TTRPG project on Kickstarter, and the campaign fully funded in 4 hours!
Set in the same universe as Scryptid Games’ critically acclaimed 2023 release, Psychic Trash Detectives, Brigitte Winter’s Golden Good Girls is a stand-alone TTRPG that invites you to play senior shelter animals living out your golden years with your fellow furballs, looking back on the times you’ve shared together: the good, the bad, and the pugly. And around the gaming table, as you bring your own Golden Good Girl to life, you perform stupid human tricks to resolve challenges and earn tasty treats.
Imagine, if you will, a game that mashes up heartfelt sitcom nostalgia with goofy, snoot-booping hijinx. Like its predecessor, 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 overlooked and discarded. But while Psychic Trash Detectives uses pulp mystery vibes as the inspiration for storytelling, Golden Good Girls pulls from the treasure trove of nostalgic sitcom tropes and touchstones.
If that sounds like your brand of fun, act fast to claim your copy of the game because everyone who backs Golden Good Girls at a physical reward tier within the first 48 hours of the campaign receives a limited edition sticker featuring Chickpea, a real-life Golden Good Girl from Baltimore, Maryland.
Treat yourself!
Scryptid Games is on Discord!
8 months ago
– Sat, Jul 06, 2024 at 08:31:35 AM
Scryptid Games has a Discord server!
Want to be the first to know the latest news as we finalize Against the Gloom and send it off to print? Interested in connecting with Against the Gloom designer Dustin Patrick Winter, and playing, creating, and talking 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.
CRIT Awards Voting Closes July 7
Voting for the CRIT Awards closes July 7th, so today is the last full day to vote for Scryptid Games’s 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.
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!
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!
Art preview and big CRIT Awards news...
9 months ago
– Thu, Jun 20, 2024 at 06:19:18 AM
Art preview!!
Production is going great for Against the Gloom. The book is currently in layout, and illustrator Gigi Wilder is hard at work completing four beautiful half-page illustrations for each of the flash fiction pieces that Dustin Patrick Winter wrote to demonstrate the world of the game.
Here’s a sneak peek at Gigi’s illustration for Dustin’s Heart to Heart, along with a short excerpt from the accompanying story.
"Roderica stormed out of her cabin, a letter freshly crumpled in her hand. She crossed the hold and stomped upstairs, then crossed the deck, the wind in her hair, ready to throw the cursed missive as far from the ship as she could manage. When she got to the rail, though, she found Heart leaning on it, pondering the Gloom…"
There’s still time to upgrade e-book purchases of Against the Gloom to physical books on BackerKit, and to snag additional copies.
We can’t wait to hold this book in our hands, and to share it with all of you. It’s going to be gorgeous.
Scryptid Games is a Finalist for TWO CRIT Awards!
Big news! We just learned that Psychic Trash Detectives, Scryptid Games’ 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.
These awards are community-nominated, so if you’re a Scryptid fan, 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.
And if you haven't played Psychic Trash Detectives yet, you can get a copy on the Scryptid Games website. It's a collaborative, diceless TTRPG played with actual garbage, and it's about psychic animals solving the mysteries that no one else cares about.
At its heart, the 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.
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.”
