We’re super close to 60% with 20 days to go. I’m confident we’ll hit our funding goal. In the meantime I want to share something cool with you.

How To Make A Cryptid

One of our goals with The Crypt Has Opened is not simply rehash every well known cryptid. We’re all very familiar with Big Foot, the chupacabra, and more. While those will be included, we still wanted to add a little twist to them, to add a little Crypt stamp on each. 

Let’s take a look at the Mermaid from Shadows of Point Pleasant, our Actual Play.

Attack of the Mermaid!

Right off the bat you can see this isn’t your Pappy Sailor Jim’s mermaid. Here we’ve crossed the creature from the Black Lagoon with something like a crab tail and fish. Tendrils rise up from the mermaid’s back toward the surface of the water.

I also wanted to add a little bit of another well known creature, the Siren. What I landed on was a mermaid that swims below the surface of the water and uses tendrils injected into the nervous system of corpses to puppet them, using them as lures for unsuspecting sailors. Why do they do this? Murder of course.

Once I have that simple idea down all I need to do is assign it a die to represent its level and another its threat. While each cryptid entry in the book will give you a base line, changing these values up or down will not cause any problems. It only changes how difficult the encounter will be. For this example let’s call this mermaid a d8 in level and a d6 in threat.

What Does That Mean?

The d8 Level Die sets the Imposition the PCs must beat to affect the mermaid. That means any roll to communicate with it, knowledge roll, trying to inflict harm, or whatever you can think of is a d8. It’s that straight forward.

The Level Die also represents how many “hits” the mermaid can take before being defeated. Each die step representing one successful roll. So for a d8 creature that would be 3 successful rolls (d4, d6, d8). 

Of course this is a general guide. Some story points or clever use of abilities may make more sense to count as two or more successes. Especially if the roll is a Wicked Win. If you follow the narrative flow you’ll know when these times are appropriate.

The Threat Die has a few fun functions. First, the cryptid can assign these die as Imposition Raises against the PCs. For our mermaid of a d6 Threat, that means it can assign up to 2 raises to a single PC or 1 raise to two. This represents the mermaid focusing their ire or attention on a person or persons. For those unfortunate people their Imposition against the mermaid in artificially and temporarily increased until the mermaid moves that threat elsewhere.

Threat Die also allow the crypt keeper the chance to spotlight the cryptid. This gives them an opportunity to change the scene or use special abilities. For each level of threat, the cryptid can steal the spotlight (typically after all the PCs have had the spotlight). 

For our mermaid’s case, they may use their mermaid ability to tap into the latent magical abilities of a corpse they are puppeting to cast a devastating spell against the PCs. 

Many cryptids will have special powers and recommendations on how you can spend their threat, or how to change up the scene. Some have unique ways to add more complications. We want to stress that if you think of something else that fits the narrative, GO FOR IT! Just tick down their Threat Die and make the move.

It is important to note that even after the cryptid has used all their threat in a scene, they may be able to “refresh” it due to consequences from die rolls and they’ll still be able to use it as Imposition Raises.

That’s It

Just like that you are empowered to design your own cryptids and can react to your players on the fly. No longer will you be caught unprepared for their shenanigans. 

Though we’re still happy to create a bunch of cryptids for you to have in your back pocket or to give you inspiration for your own ideas. In The Crypt Has Opened we have a load of ideas—too many to put in this one book to be honest. So even after this campaign is over we will continue to put out material and support you all with new ideas.

Those Crypt Chronicles aren’t there just for show… muahahahaha!

That’s it for this update. We’ll see you by the campfire.