Ring Side Report- RPG review of Cryptid Creeks

Originally posted at www.throatpunchgames.com, a new idea every day!

Product- Cryptid Creeks System- Cryptid Creeks Producer- HatchlingDM Price- Pay what you want here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/480826/cryptid-creeks?affiliate_id=658618 TL; DR-Girl Scouts Call of Needful Things! 93%

Basics- Time to fight the peddler! Cryptid Creeks is a cartoon monster of the week RPG where players are all members of River Scouts. Ghosts and an enigmaticWatcher (think Zordon from the Power Rangers) guide the new scouts as an evil thing called The Peddler gives gifts to people of Clawfoot and bestows curses on them, making them more evil every day. Will you have the day? That’s the hook, and let’s dig into how we play.

Base mechanics- This is apocalypse engine basically with additional parts built in. You want to do a thing? You roll 2d6+modifier. You score 6 or less, bad. 7-9 good with a but. 10-11 good! 12+ CRITICAL and you get some awesome stuff to happen.

Advantage and Disadvantage- If something is good, you have advantage and if something is bad, you have disadvantage. In either case you roll 3d6. For advantage you take the best two and for disadvantage you take the worst two.

Bad things- As you do things, you get misfortune. These are the bad things that happen and give you those disadvantages.

Investigations- The bulk of the game is spent trying to remove curses given to townspeople from the Peddler. To get rid of the curse, the scouts have to investigate. This mostly is the players running around and gathering clues via investigating with their abilities and checks. When the players think they have enough they make a check like above but use the clues they gathered as a bonus and the difficulty of the curse’s investigation as a negative. Know enough and you know how to end the curse.

Sashes and abilities-Players have tools in their arsenal to fight the evil. Players start with one of three classes that give the a watcher’s gift and a playbook move. Both of these give you places where you can throw advantage at a situation. You also have sashes from the past dead members of the River Scouts. You can remove one to gain a bonus to a situation. And lastly you recover clubhouse collections of random things that you can take with you to fight evil.

Ok, let’s review!

Mechanics or Crunch- What’s here is good, but there is not enough to fully help me. I don’t have much experience with the apocalypse engine for RPGs, though it’s easy to run a 2d6+mod as a system. But, the rules discuss moves. I don’t think that term is ever fully discussed. Also, there are examples of how to do all these things, but not enough to fully run through how to do it. That said, I think I understand it. Again, the math is 2d6+mod to see how you do. And furthermore, the game is not designed to be a smash mouth, grind the PC to a paste dungeon crawler. It’s a collaborative story where the GM and the players both have equally active roles in playing and running the game. It just needs more description of how to do this to really make me more comfortable running. 4/5

Theme or Fluff- I love Gravity Falls, and as a child of the 80s, I love Saturday morning cartoons. This is an episode of Scooby Doo that I get to play. If there was a talking dog class, it couldn’t get more on the nose. It’s got a lot of soul in its delivery and world building. 5/5

Execution- While I might be playing by ear for figuring out exactly how to play, there is a lot here. The basics are well covered with hyperlinks, pictures, layout, and two full adventures in the book. What’s more, there are player handouts, black and white maps of the town, character specific character sheets, and even handouts from the get go. This was three bucks for me, and worth every penny. 5/5

Summary-Cryptid Creeks is a fun Saturday morning cartoon. I like the theme and the execution of it, but I need more explanation. It’s very much a narrative RPG and not an adversarial RPG. This is a game you play when you and your friends want to tell a story together and don’t just want to write a book by yourself. So, keeping that in mind, you will have fun. But maybe read the base Apocalypse World book to get a bit more of an idea on the mechanics. 93 %