Don’t solve the mystery—BE the mystery—in the TTRPG anthology Tales from the Cryptids
Feast on a collection of new TTRPGs and eerie ephemera from acclaimed authors, poets, and game designers, in an anthology rooted in the point-of-view of the monsters.
Scryptid Games just launched the campaign for their newest project, and it’s a little… well, cryptic. Not only because it’s entirely about cryptids, but because the shape of it isn’t what you’d expect from a TTRPG.
You probably already know what a cryptid is: Bigfoot, Mothman, the Flatwoods Monster, the Michigan Dogman. Those weird, mysterious creatures that exist in the dark and eerie places of the world, in the liminal spaces of imagination and reality. The stars of our local and regional campfire stories. But have you ever wondered if they have lives and stories of their own? Do Hodags dream of electric sheep?
Tales from the Cryptids is a forthcoming anthology of TTRPGs, fiction, poetry, and other ephemera that flips the lens on conventional cryptid lore. A collection of stories and games where you aren’t hunting the cryptids—you are the cryptids.
Scryptid Games is the indie press that published Psychic Trash Detectives, Against the Gloom, and—most recently—the card-guided, world-building-and-breaking game Assemblage. But this will be their first full-length anthology that showcases creative brains from all over the TTRPG space.
The Ocean’s Eleven-style cast of contributors who have already signed on to Tales from the Cryptids runs the gamut. On the literary side of things there’s professor A.E. Osworth, poet Jason B. Crawford, and debut author Shen Tao, whose recently released The Poet Empress promises to be one of the year’s more impressive and original fantasy yarns.
On the gaming side of things, they’ve signed creators you are sure to recognize:
- Shing Yin Khor, whose perspective-altering keepsake games like A Mending and Remember August have players creating artifacts like hand-written letters and embroidered maps;
- Sharang Biswas, a Stretch Armstrong of game design, whose body of work spans from the expertly transmuted and more conventional Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game all the way to the erotic and esoteric Honey and Hot Wax anthology; and
- Avery Alder, the revered Canadian Game Sage whose oft-imitated titles Dream Askew and The Quiet Year were, for so, so many of us, a turning point in how we thought about games.
The art for the book is provided by Amber Ramirez, an illustrator and tattoo artist whose portfolio of moon-powered moths, winged toads, and fungal cats feels like the perfect fit for a cryptid anthology.
But the biggest foot of them all belongs to editor Brigitte Winter, who assembled the who’s-who for this project and is leading the charge. Winter is an award-winning game designer as well as an accomplished editor and speculative fiction writer, with a novel—also about cryptids and queer happenings in small towns—set to debut in spring 2027.
All of these folks are signed onto Tales from the Cryptids, and what deliciously weird, wonderful oddities they’ll send our way is anyone’s guess. It’s a mystery, but one that promises to be quite good. Just like the Jelly People of Northern Ohio used to tell me, with a name like Scryptid Games, it has to be good. (Y'know, because it's cryptids and they are Scryptid. Anyway.)
The best part? The anthology is opening for submissions from game designers, fiction writers, poets, and other uncanny contributors this spring. (The Bat-thing of Baltimore—he’s right here on the couch—says you can follow or back the campaign, and also sign up for the Scryptid Games newsletter to stay in the loop.)
I ask you: wouldn’t it be nice to see some more work that was both coherent and well-designed, but also truly weird, truly different? A game that was a delight to read by flashlight under the covers or by the crackling flames of a campfire? Well, look no further than Tales from the Cryptids.
Seriously. Look no further. Oh no, don't go into the woods! Stay out of there!
Disclaimer: neither the author of this piece nor Scryptid Games can prove the existence of the Jelly People of Northern Ohio, and any resemblance to the gelatinous creatures of nearby states is completely coincidental. There is no reason to fear that the Jelly People are coming for you. None at all.
