Mirth and Misery is afoot in Time Without Tide, the next TTRPG from the Call of Cthluhu publishers

Whatever your preferred Chaosium poison is (I’m a sucker for Runequest and its setting), its always worth a little look whenever they announce anything new. In this case it’s the ‘Mirth and Misery’-laden Time Without Tide, a faux-Victorian setting primed for exploratory jaunts.

The new setting sees characters taking on the role of adventurers who must venture out from safety into the dangerous, fog-consumed world beyond the city walls. Its not-quite-Victorian setting is perfectly placed to drum up pulp-style Age of Adventure tropes, while also sitting pleasantly within the ‘could be Steampunk’ space. It leaves it wide enough that there’s plenty of room for homebrew and, on that note, it should be mentioned that the system has been specifically designed for this — it’s not a repurpose or reskin.

I’m yet to explore the quickplay, but thinking about the potential of creatures and monsters-of-the-week that could be corrupted by the fog spirals up thoughts of Into The Odd’s forays into the wilderness. There’s also a part of me that wonders if people might, as part of longer campaigns, dabble in societal socialplay akin to Our Brilliant Ruin.

Time Without Tide is currently on BackerKit (through until the 24th of September) where you can opt to follow it in order to access a free, 62-page Quickstart guide. Among those sixty-odd pages there’s also an adventure (for your Keeper to run) and some pre-generated characters (for your Delvers to play) so that you can get it to the table as quickly as possible.

“Time Without Tide gives us the chance to explore a completely new world and a new way to play,” said Chaosium Vice President Michael O’Brien. “We wanted the World of Fog to feel dangerous, strange, and full of possibilities. Players can negotiate, improvise, fight, and shape their Delvers in wonderfully unexpected ways. We can’t wait to see what they create.”

You can find out more about Time Without Tide on its BackerKit page. If you’re interested in finding more games that are going through crowdfunding then why not check out our Currently Crowdfunding series?