It's not too late! Preorder Against the Gloom, a dice-based role-playlist-building game about music’s furious resistance to despair. Plus, order Kickstarter exclusive add-ons!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Last chance to shred the Gloom!
6 months ago
– Wed, Mar 13, 2024 at 08:41:09 AM
This is it, friends. Only one more day to back Against the Gloom on Kickstarter.
Time is running short on this rockin' campaign, and we're narrowing in on our biggest stretch goal yet: a full mixed genre digital mixtape of songs composed exclusively for Against the Gloom.
This is beyond exciting, because it means we can fulfill our dream with this project: to design and publish a TTRPG project that celebrates music...with actual music by indie artists who love the same nerdy stuff we do.
If you’ve been considering increasing your pledge to grab extra rewards, or meaning to recommend this game to a friend, now is the moment to make your move.
Every dollar pledged in the next day will help us bring on additional musical artists to contribute to our mixtape. We’ve already heard from several incredible musicians who are interested in creating songs for this project, so please help spread the word about the campaign so we can say yes to them and produce more cool stuff for you.
Exclusive music by Bard City…
Early work is already coming together on the two songs our previous stretch goal enabled us to commission! We're giving our community an exclusive listen to the first song, Blast Off, over on the Against the Gloom Kickstarter page prior to its full release.
Composed by Baltimore-based folk TTRPG/LARP band Bard City, Blast Off is an infectious bop that features character and band cameos from the Gen Con TV Sarah's Table game. Give it a listen — just head over to the campaign and scroll down to News!
Then check out the game sessions that inspired this song. The videos are linked under Events on the Against the Gloom Kickstarter page.
GameFace Con rocked! See you at Unpub!
Scryptid Co-Founders Dustin Patrick Patrick Winter, Brigitte Winter, and Nat Mesnard spent the past weekend at GameFace Con in Baltimore, Maryland. This first-year con took place at Peabody Heights Brewery, and featured more than 30 indie companies selling and running games, plus a delicious food truck and a custom beer brewed in honor of special guest Zeb Cook!
Dustin ran two games of Against the Gloom for full tables, and dozens of players got their grubby hands on Psychic Trash Detectives, Ball of the Wild, and our Scryptid Games Facilitator’s Guide.
We’ll be continuing the Maryland fun next weekend at Unpub, and Dustin will be playtesting another game of Against the Gloom at 8pm on Saturday, 3/16. Come say hi if you’re there!
🎶 You unlocked Stretch Goal 4!
6 months ago
– Wed, Mar 06, 2024 at 09:59:36 AM
We've got disco fever!
Oops, you did it again! Late last night, you blew through Stretch Goal 4, so we are definitely commissioning rad songs for you from Epic Levels and Bard City inspired by Against the Gloom.
Epic Levels is a multi-hyphenate that started as a comedy fantasy rap outfit that has moved into podcasts, game accessories, apparel, and book publishing.
Bard City is a folk TTRPG/LARP band from Baltimore that plays music about looting liches, clearing dungeons, and the power of friendship.
Even bigger news: the good folks at Bard City were so inspired by Against the Gloom that they already recorded their song...
Lead singer Patrick Wheltle told us all about it when he joined Against the Gloom designer Dustin Patrick Winter and Tabletopped podcast host Nick Perron on an episode of Sarah’s Table that will air this Friday, March 8th, at 8pm ET on Gen Con TV.
In the second half of their two-episode campaign, the Fractal Mimics return to play out the rollicking conclusion to their weird and wild gig. And this unmissable episode includes an exclusive reveal: Pat shares a FIRST-LISTEN PREVIEW of the full original song composed by Bard City for Against the Gloom! Performed with the disco styling of the Fractal Mimics, this tune is a real bop.
A few reviews from our Sarah's Table players:
From Pat: “This open ended silliness and collaborative storytelling is just what I wanna see and I can't wait to play it with my friends when it comes in.”
From Nick: “Y'all I had a ton of fun. Sarah, you make a really fun show and it was a blast meeting you. Pat, I have just been listening to the song on repeat, you are a genius. Dustin, you rock my dude. What a fun as hell game. I can't wait to run it at my table.”
Final Stretch!
With only a week left for this campaign, there’s still time to unlock Stretch Goal 5. If we are able to raise $8K before March 15th, we’ll collaborate with additional musical artists to create a whole digital mixed genre mixtape inspired by Against the Gloom. We are so determined to make this happen that we’ve already started reaching out to musicians.
We’re pumped to share that we have our first commitment from Aven Gonzales to contribute a song to the mixtape! Aven is musician, a game designer, and graphic artist currently performing with Pick Your Poison Productions.
We’ll share info on our additional musical collaborators as they sign on.
In the meantime, please help us spread the word about Against the Gloom over the next week. Let’s end this campaign on an epic high note!
See you at GameFace Con?
We're heading to a new hometown con this weekend! GameFace Con will take place in Scryptid Co-Founders Dustin Patrick Winter and Brigitte Winter’s home city of Baltimore, Maryland, and Co-Founder Nat Mesnard will be coming down to hang out too. If you're in town, we'd love for you to join us! GameFace Con will take place on March 9 & 10, running from 12 - 8 PM each day at Peabody Heights Brewery.
This FREE con will feature 30 indie companies selling and running games, plus a delicious food truck and a custom beer to try brewed in honor of special guest Zeb Cook! No tickets are required. Just show up and have fun!
Dustin will be leading a game of Against the Gloom, plus we'll have all the best Scryptid Games goods on offer, including:
Let's make a mixtape!
7 months ago
– Sat, Feb 24, 2024 at 04:21:52 PM
You did it! In little more than a week, you’ve fully funded this project, and unlocked all of our initial stretch goals. Against the Gloom will be a gorgeous perfect-bound book filled with everything you need to play the game, plus bonus original fiction by the game’s lead writer, Dustin Patrick Winter, set in the world of the Gloom!
Ready to get ambitious with us? We’re excited to announce a whole series of new stretch goals for this project:
$5,000 - Now things get really interesting. At this milestone, we’ll commission two original songs inspired by Against the Gloom, created and performed by Bard City and Epic Levels.
$8,000 - So you like that song idea, huh? At this milestone, we’ll collaborate with additional musical artists to create a whole digital mixed genre mixtape inspired by Against the Gloom.
$10,000 - We're throwing a launch party! This milestone will enable us to throw an Against the Gloom release party at an event space in one of our East Coast cities. We'll be demoing the game and enjoying community with everyone who can make it!
Meet the Musicians
Once we raise $5k, we’ll be collaborating with Bard City and Epic Levels to create and share original songs inspired by Against the Gloom.
Bard City is a folk TTRPG/LARP band from Baltimore that plays music about looting liches, clearing dungeons, and the power of friendship.
Epic Levels is a multi-hyphenate that started as a comedy fantasy rap outfit that has moved into podcasts, game accessories, apparel, and book publishing.
Against the Gloom Liveplay
Want to see what this game is all about? On Friday, March 1 and Friday,March 8, at 5 PT / 8 ET, designer Dustin Patrick Winter and friends will join Sarah for a two-session game of Against the Gloom on the Gen Con TV show, Sarah's Table. Tune in to see the game play and hear rad stories of fierce musicians!
From designer-led playtests online and in Maryland, to a session with our friends at Galileo Games in NYC, playlists are building and rockers are defeating despair all across the Gloom. Listen to the music that inspired some of these games by checking out their public playlists on Spotify:
Here's what some of our playtesters have been saying about their experiences with Against the Gloom:
"Against the Gloom is a rocking good time full of hopepunk, found families, communal world building, and the power of music to heal the world."
“It’s basically gay space pirates fighting metaphorical mental illness/trauma in a world powered by music. So like OFMD where the soundtrack is the magic system. In space."
“Scryptid Games’ last game, Psychic Trash Detectives, was one of the most innovative games I’ve ever played, and having had the chance to playtest this one, it’s absolutely following in that tradition.”
Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for funding this game. It already means so much to so many people, and we can’t wait for you to play it!
Like a Supersonic Rockership 🎸 🚀 You've Already Unlocked Stretch Goal 2!
7 months ago
– Sat, Feb 17, 2024 at 09:57:33 AM
Well, that was fast! Overnight, you’ve managed to unlock our second stretch goal. Thanks to you, Against the Gloom will not only be a slick, glossy, perfect-bound book, it will now be filled with original fiction by the game’s lead writer, Dustin Patrick Winter, set in the world of the Gloom!
Dustin is a published speculative fiction writer whose work has appeared in a number of zines and anthologies over the past decade, including Junked Histories, the companion anthology to Scryptid Games’ last release, Psychic Trash Detectives.
Here’s a sneak preview of the fiction Dustin is creating to flesh out the world the Gloom:
🎸 🎸 🎸 🎸 🎸 🎸
By the end of our first week on board the ship, the band had already decided to break up. And that was before the ghosts came.
Bella’s Debt was doomed from the first day of our tour; we were a mismatched bunch. Our aesthetic composition was like the soup of melted ice cream: strawberry bebop, hard chocolate rock, vanilla pop all running together into a sickly sweet sludge.
We had struck out from the city of Valediction, our instrument cases painted with the names of former outfits, personal mantras, or the cheap, weak wards hastily purchased before we set out—wards against intrusion, mold, rust, and doldrums.
While we sleep, the ghosts come over the rails of the ship to find us. In cabins like coffins we come awake: we hear their scratching above us on the planks that threaten to press against our noses, and hear their ragged breaths through the warded cabin doors. We lay petrified, our blood loud in our ears, pounding out a beat, a regular four on the floor. In the bunk beneath me, our drummer chuckles in his sleep, a whimper pulled through clattering teeth. He had fallen asleep dreaming up names for a new song whose lyrics we were still trying to catch.
I roll off of my bunk. I tiptoe across the creaking planks and press my ear to the door. Something is on the other side of it. I can hear it scratching at the wood, slowly digging jagged little valleys into the grain with long, sharp fingers.
I take a deep breath and unbolt the door. I reach out and turn the knob, let the door swing open.
The thing standing in the doorway has no eyes, just deep sockets. Its whole body is skeletal. It is a strange sensation, to be watched by something that cannot see.
I sigh. “Hello, Crit. You want to talk?”
“Always,” Crit says. Crit’s voice is hollow but human-like. Not at all how one would expect a ghostly terror made of bones and tattered shrouds to sound. Crit sweeps a hand out into the hold of the ship and says, “After you.”
I grab my cloak from a peg on the wall and wrap it around me. With a shiver, I step past.
🎸 🎸 🎸 🎸 🎸 🎸
Want to know what happens next? Thanks to your support, the rest of this story (and more!) will be threaded throughout the Against the Gloom game book.
Glam it up!
So what’s next? We’re now working to unlock our third stretch goal! At $4,000, we’ll have the funds to commission gorgeous full-color interior illustrations to fill the pages of Against the Gloom. And once that stretch goal is unlocked, we’ll reveal our next mystery goal, which maaaay involve some actual music inspired by the game.
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.
Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and BlueSky, and share why you think this project is cool! Brag about your largesse! Gloat about how you’re best friends with us! But truly, word of mouth goes a long way.
Meet the Artists
Gigi Wilder is a Japan-based illustrator with a passion for fantasy creatures, sprawling environments, and colorful, expressive characters. She created the gorgeous cover illustration for Against the Gloom and we are eager to commission her for additional interior art.
Jupiter V is a Canadian artist and musician creating wild and inventive characters through their cartoon fantasy and sci fi project, Dungeon Rabbit. Dustin’s magical collaboration with Jupiter began when Dustin was lured to a late night campfire near a beach in Nova Scotia by Jupiter’s enchanting voice and guitar work. You may recognize this beautiful illustration that Jupiter created for the Against the Gloom promo postcard, which will be prominently featured in the game book. We can't wait to tap them for more rad art!
Of note, Dustin and Jupiter also have similar taste in shirts.
Friends of the Gloom
We wanted to take this opportunity to highlight some other rad Kickstarter projects by members of the Extended Scryptid Universe (TM). We love these projects and hope you’ll show them some love too.
The Old Ways Must Go: Tarot for Transformation by Samphire Savage and Tim Rodriguez is a tarot-based game about coming together to create new ideas, frameworks, or rituals from outdated, decaying old ones. Scryptid Games Co-Founders Dustin Patrick Winter and Brigitte Winter had a magical experience playtesting this gorgeous game a few weeks ago with Samphire and Tim. In the spirit of thoughtful world-building games like Dialect, The Old Ways Must Go uses rituals as the seeds to bloom imaginative worlds inspired by tarot art and intuition. If you love tarot decks, intuitive storytelling, and imaginative world-building games, this one’s for you.
New Year, New You: A Speculative Anthology of Reinvention is a diverse collection of science fiction and fantasy stories that examine the hidden costs and complexities of becoming one’s better self. Brigitte Winter, a Scryptid Games Co-Founder and the creator of Psychic Trash Detectives, is contributing a story to this book, and she’s also working on the publishing team. The anthology will be packed with fresh stories by alumni from the prestigious 2023 Viable Paradise Workshop, with bonus stories from Viable Paradise faculty and renowned authors, Elizabeth Bear and Daryl Gregory. If you’re into boundary-pushing fantasy and sci fi, you’ll love this book.
Sentai and Sensibility is the latest project by 9th Level Games. Described as Bridgerton meets Kaiju, Sentai & Sensibility brings together the childlike abandon of Sunday morning tokusatsu with the profound joy of regency romance novels. Basically, what if Jane Austen wrote Power Rangers? Scryptid Games Co-Founder Nat Mesnard is one of the brains behind 9th Level’s incredible marketing, and the folks over there have been buds of ours since the early days of Scryptid. Sentai and Sensibility has taken Kickstarter by storm and raised over 1,800% of its funding goal. With only five days left before this campaign ends, now is the perfect moment to claim your copy of this game.
Glossy? PERFECT???
7 months ago
– Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 12:48:27 PM
Huzzah! We did it! YOU did it! Our campaign for Against the Gloom has hit the first stretch goal and reached official gold-record status! So what does that mean?
Now Against the Gloom will arrive on doorsteps with a slick, glossy cover with all that lush, gorgeous art presented in immaculate detail. And the book will be perfect-bound, with the title snaking neatly along the spine, making it really stand out with some OOMPH on your bookshelf!
We’ve found that the glossy covers also stand up much better to wear and tear, meaning your physical copy of Against the Gloom will stand the test of time across numerous world tours.
Stretch goal #2: Bring me that horizon…
Our next stretch goal is at $3,000. At this level, the book will feature original fiction set in the world of the Gloom, written by the game’s designer, Dustin Patrick Winter.
Dustin is a captivating writer, cutting a path across the pages with wit and charm. The addition of his original fiction will help bring the world of the Gloom to life, opening up new ideas for players and facilitators alike and bringing more of what’s locked away inside that brain of his onto the page to be enjoyed by all of us! Selfish of him to keep all those stories locked away in the captain’s quarters, isn’t it! Mutiny on the E-string, I say! Give us the stories!
Against the Gloom Liveplay on February 23!
Want to see what this game is all about? On Friday, February 23 at 5 PT / 8 ET, designer Dustin Patrick Winter and friends will join Sarah for a game of Against the Gloom on the Gen Con TV show, Sarah's Table. Tune in to see the game play and hear rad stories of fierce musicians!
