Psychic Trash Detectives is a shared-GM game inspired by guidebook-style TTRPGs and a pulpy, punk ethos that demands a shift in how games and literature are defined. You do not need roleplaying experience to play—just open the book and start to read.

Collaborative Storytelling

If you have played a TTRPG before, you'll find that Psychic Trash Detectives offers an immersive storytelling experience unlike any other. You and the other players will use actual trash to generate elements of the game world, resolve questions, and push the story forward. You'll use whatever trash you bring to the game space (or whatever trash is there already).

Plus, you'll create the setting of the game together too, mapping out on a hand-drawn map the weird places where your characters find their favourite trash. And when it comes to the psychic trash visions, you'll play weird, surrealist mini-games to determine the supernatural messages and memories, such as:

Memory collage. Each player shares a vision of one 5-second interaction that occurred with this trash in the past 24 hours. Discuss how these visions may answer the question.
Psychic sketching. Each player either closes their eyes or uses their non-dominant hand to privately sketch a picture that answers the question asked at the top of the scene.
Erasure poetry. The Protagonist chooses a piece of trash from the playing space or someone’s private trash stash that has words on it. Each player blacks out one of the words, revealing a new meaning within the text.
Musical inspiration. Randomly select a song from the musical playlist you’ve been playing. Listen to the song together and discuss how the title, music, and/or lyrics answer the question.

Players will create their own mystery and their own psychic trash animals: raccoons, opossums, seagulls, pigeons, dogs, cats, and all other manner of trashy little critters. And each trash animal has their own way of solving mysteries: are they the cozy grand possum wrapped in an afghan made from shredded plastic? Or are they the erudite cockroach who sees right through lies?

This re-playable game is for 3-5 players and tells a complete story in one session. It is a game that absolutely reeks of radical self-acceptance and punk camaraderie.

Written by game designer and published fiction writer Brigitte Winter, Psychic Trash Detectives is a full colour core game book illustrated by A.V.Eerie, who creates the amazing queer webcomic Along the River Phoria. In addition to containing the full Psychic Trash Detectives roleplaying game, it also features poetry and fiction inspired by the world of the game by:

Jason B. Crawford
Deidre Delpino Dykes
Nino McQuown
Nat Mesnard
Tonee Moll
A.E. Osworth
Tyler Vile
Tristan B Willis
Dustin Patrick Winter

Winners of:

Best Indie TTRPG 2024 - CRiT Awards

"The folks at Scryptid Games are thoughtful and clever, and the ode to synanthropes that they've created in Psychic Trash Detectives is beautiful and profoundly odd."

—Avery Alder, designer of Dream Askew, Monsterhearts 2, and A Quiet Year


Released: 05 June 2025