Cryptid Conductor [Beta]

WELCOME CONDUCTOR!

All sorts of odd, strange, and mythological entities travel these lines, moving from one region to another for love, reconnection, work, or for just the joys of spiritual travel.

But you are no mere traveler, you are one of the famed CRYPTID CONDUCTORS, an entity proven to manage this wily group of travelers from point A to point B with minimal issue. Perhaps a Bagiennik searching for another man’s trash, or a Squonk, looking to cry at a sight of joy for once? You can get them there!

On one such cross country journey, it comes to your attention through an anonymous tip that a passenger has planned to sabotage the trip! Can you keep this train moving, grooving, and capture the secret saboteur before the end of the line? Or is this the last call for the Eclectic Express?

CRYPTID CONDUCTOR is a solo mystery game of investigating sabotage on an eclectic journey across country with your favorite mysterious, dangerous local entities!  

Besides this manual, You’ll need the following to play:

• writing utensil and paper, or another way to take notes
• A set of polyehedral dice - d4, d6, d8, d10, d12
• deck of standard playing cards, shuffled with jokers removed.
• a coin (or d2)

This game was initially made for the Tabletop Train Jam 2025 ,Folklore Jam 2025, and the Queertober 2025 Jam. It includes some of my favorites of both - historical train imagery, and mentions of the Missouri Momo, a cryptid from my home state! It's also very inspired by my love of the game systems Brindlewood Bay, Waffles for Esther, and conversations with my family about cryptid lore. 

Like any TTRPG, I recommend using safety tools whether playing solo alone or solo with a group! A tool that might be useful for this game is - The Palette - A Safety Tool by Jay Dragon

This is a BETA DOCUMENT for playtesting and jam entry purposes. This document is free, please consider writing a review or purchasing as a donation if you enjoyed it!

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License:

This work is based on The Hints and Hijinx System, product of Pandion Games (https://pandiongames.com/), developed and authored by Andrew Boyd, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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The Hints and Hijinx system is a purpose-built solo mystery system that's easy to design mystery games for, and puts the power of deduction in the hands of the player!

This is done by a clue gathering mechanic, where the player needs to overcome a challenge or complication with one of their skills at thirteen different locations. On failures, their skill’s dice rating can degrade, making finding future clues more difficult.

After their investigation is complete, the clues they gathered are used to make a hypothesis. The more clues the player can string together to create their hypothesis, the larger the dice they roll to see if their character’s hypothesis is correct. On a 5+ die roll, their deductions are correct and the mystery solved!