Time Without Tide: Mirth & Misery in a World of Fog

We’ve been live for just under five hours and we are approaching 600 backers. We’ve got the POSTER  MAPS and EXTRA RIBBON stretch goals cleared. We’re on our way to the next one, a BONUS ADVENTURE written by the talented George Mann!

It’s utterly surreal to see so many people celebrating Time Without Tide. It is also extremely late (early) in Australia. So some folks are signing off and others are signing on. As a combined goodbye/hello message, here’s a teaser of what to expect from the EXPANDED BACKGRONDS. Take a look at the fine trio in the poll below. These are snapshots of the talented Léo Chérel’s illustrations of some playable Delver backgrounds. Which are you most excited to learn more about? Which one would you play?

We’re live! Time Without Tide has launched. Not only that, we’ve hit our first funding goal.

Thank you, earnestly, to everybody who’s supported the game and the team. We couldn’t have done it without you. Now, we can focus on making Time Without Tide the best it possibly can be. That starts right now. This is only the beginning!

Our first funding goal is a set of EXPANDED BACKGROUNDS. Check out the stretch goals section of the page for more information. Our next goal, adding POSTER MAPS to every physical copy of the Core Rulebook, kicks in at $50,000.

PREVIEWS, PRODUCTS, & PLAYER OPTIONS

There's lots of Time Without Tide news to talk about! One quick reminder that all followers of this project can download the Time Without Tide: Quickstart PDF for free, then let's get started.

The Glass Cannon Network Plays TWT

The wonderful GCN folks have released a two-part play-through of the Time Without Tide: Quickstart. It's ripping good fun. If you want to see some actual gameplay from a very talented cast, check out both episodes on the Glass Cannon Network YouTube channel. Thanks to Sydney Amanuel, Matthew Capodicasa, Paula Deming, Chris Grace, Jared Logan, and the entire crew!



TWT Quickstart Goes Global

Earlier this month, the first physical versions of the QS were handed out at GenCon. Since then, several copies have crossed the oceans, and landed in the hands of the wider TWT team. Here's a copy that recently arrived in Australia, photographed alongside a selection of prototype/development versions, some of which are several years old. It's come a long way!



Crowdfunding Previews
Last time, we mentioned all the cool stuff that's coming in the Backerkit campaign. As the big day approaches, here are a few more details on what to expect. 

We'll say more across the coming week!

The TWT Community

The TWT community in the Chaosium Discord (which just passed 7K members) have been sharing some fantastic pictures, ideas, and gameplay reports. If you have questions about TWT, please join in the conversation using your platform of choice. It has been great to see such an enthusiastic group gathering together to talk about the game.

An important part of that community is here on Backerkit, where you can comment on these updates and vote in our polls. One vote is live now (explainer videos is winning) but let's finish today's update by expanding on the result of a previous poll about character advancement.

Character Advancement & Player Options

When we talked about Delver Creation two updates ago, we touched on player options (records). Today, I want to focus on two kinds of records (features and adaptations) since they interact directly with XP.

When you spend XP to increase your skills, you can unlock features. You get a junior feature when your score in a skill reaches 2, and a veteran feature when your score in a skill reaches 4. When you unlock a feature, you select one from a list of player options associated with whatever skill you increased. This is how you master your field. Veteran features in particular can make you almost peerless in your chosen focus. They aren't available during initial character creation, but you can (technically) get one when you first spend XP.

As for adaptations, investing XP into one either awakes or further develops it. This process extends an adaptations' powers, expanding both the benefits and potentially the drawbacks too. Every adaptation is unique. They open up fundamentally new ways to solve problems. These ways are not always perfect (or safe) but they're reliable; the kind of abilities you could build an entire playstyle around.

So what kind of Delver will you create? Will you take the broader approach of increasing your traits? Will you specialize with skills and features? Or will you swing for the fences and embrace the strange and wonderful world of adaptations?

That's all for now - Launch day is just around the corner. Thanks again everybody.

GEN CON, PHYSICAL QUICKSTART, LORE

Gen Con has wrapped! A huge thanks to everybody who swung by the Chaosium booth. Check out some images from the show below, including a physical copy of the Quickstart! For those of you who missed getting a physical copy at Gen Con, read on for some exciting news. 

We're super excited about the upcoming Backerkit launch. We want it to be the best it can be, so we've decided to hold off hitting the big button for a couple more weeks. The new date is September 1st. That extra time means we can add so much more to the campaign. In that spirit, here's some of the things we can share right away: 

So, there will be a little bit longer to wait until the campaign launches, but it will let us make everything bigger and better.

It also means that we have some extra time to talk about something plenty of folks have been requesting; story, setting and lore.

The World of Fog

First, there's a short summary of Time Without Tide's setting in Chapter 5 of the Quickstart. It's a free download for anyone who follows the project, so remember to check it out. However, it only scratches the surface. 

Time Without Tide takes place in the World of Fog. It’s not Earth and it never was. Everything used to be wonderful. Humanity luxuriated in an era of boundless innovation called the Age of Decadence. Thanks to marvelous technology powered by shards of the moon, they were capable of almost anything.

Then came the Sundering. The moon crashed down to earth. A twisted fog called the “Unknown” emerged from the wound left in the night sky. It smothered and mutated the few disorientated survivors; anybody who wasn’t protected by light. It gave birth to terrible monsters that started to stalk through the ruins of Decadent cities. That’s the backdrop.

Your adventures happen later.

Decades have passed. Anybody who remembers the Sundering is dead or suspiciously old. After a few generations of despair, humanity shakily hauled itself upright. Getting this far was a struggle, but even the softest of Decadent hands grew calloused eventually. Now, human civilization with all of its glories, follies, and flaws, is fighting back.

You, as Delvers, are at the forefront of this struggle. Your guild exists to venture into the Unknown. You hunt dangerous monsters, you scavenge for rare resources, and you do whatever you can to help the other survivors of the fallen moon.

The Delvers’ Guild headquarters are on a rocky island off the coast of Saltport; last and greatest city of the age, the justified center of the tideless world. It stands on a fortified peninsula at the edge of a larger, lost, Decadent metropolis. It’s filled with all kinds of people, distributed across twelve districts; greedy industrialists, dejected workers, irreverent dandies, sailors, soldiers, performers, scientists, criminals, journalists, and more.  

Your adventures shape Saltport. We’ve laid out an interconnected web of characters, factions, plots, and threats to the last city. The way you deal with them has direct and visible consequences. When you take a job for one faction the balance of power swings in their favor. Eventually, their will might overwhelm Saltport, for better or worse. 

What about beyond the walls? Outside Saltport, dozens of smaller townships and outposts (called tenderholds) are fighting to establish themselves. Just like in Saltport, your actions will shape the surrounding regions. The longer you play, the more you will see the World of Fog Develop around you.

I’ll close off today’s update by saying that when you play Time Without Tide, you get to decide what the World of Fog looks like. All the people, places, and history therein is yours to rework and restructure however best suits your games. What’s written is a suggestion. We’re proud of the story and we’ve done our best to make it both compelling and receptive to the actions players take. Your interpretations are sure to entertain everybody at your table. 

One last thing, thank you for answering our polls. Please keep your comments coming. For example, are there any details about the World of Fog you’d like to hear more about?

So far, our polls have been about what to focus on first. Here's a more cut and dry one.  What kind of video content would you’d like us to release leading up to and during the course of the campaign? We can't make it all, so we'll have to prioritize. Please share your thoughts, both here, and in the Chaosium Discord. 

Thanks everybody!

Character Creation, Liveplays, & GenCon

There is just over a week left until we launch! Meanwhile, Gen Con is in full swing. Please keep your questions about Time Without Tide coming, both here and in the Chaosium Discord. Based on everybody’s answers to the latest poll, it’s time to talk about character creation. An honorary mention to second place in the poll, lore and setting details. We promise we'll talk about them soon!

First though, for everybody who wants to see what a game of Time Without Tide looks like in practice, watch David Naylor run an all star cast through a session on the Chaosium YouTube channel. A big thanks to everybody involved.

Also, for anybody attending Gen Con, there are some physical copies of the Quickstart up for grabs. Swing by the Chaosium booth and say hi. 

Let's walk through Delver creation process. Your Delver begins as a blank slate. You add detail to them across a series of steps.

Step 1 - Natural Skills: Of the 6 total skills, three begin with a score of 0 and three begin with a score of 1. You roll a D6 to determine which. As a reminder, the six skills are CULTURE, INDUSTRY, NAVIGATION, SKULDUGGERY, SURVIVAL, and VIOLENCE.

Step 2 - Background: Next, you chose a background. Each background applies a suite of pre-set modifications to your Delver that set them apart from the crowd. Although the exact changes vary, they all balance out in the end. The one thing all backgrounds share is a choice between either +1 to any skill (you decide), or an adaptation.

Here are a few examples of the modifications that backgrounds apply:

Backgrounds affect more than just mechanics. They represent whatever your character did before they became a Delver. This affects how the world sees them, the kind of background knowledge they can expect to draw from, and the sort of life they've lived up until now. It also helps give you a deeper a sense of who they are as a character.

Step 3 - Relay and Registration: Once everybody’s made a Delver, you move onto sorting out your party. As a Delver, you work with a team of other trained specialists. You are unified around your relay, a priceless Decadent artifact that lets you teleport vast distances. Relays, like ships, have names. Most people will know you by your relay’s name. For example, the pre-generated Delvers in the Time Without Tide: Quickstart are the crew of Dowsing Odd.

Here, you talk with your party. You decide who carries your relay. You figure out who's job it is to take care of what. Generally, you'll select your records here, including some basic items and any features you earned during the previous step (by getting a score of 2 in any skill).

Step 4 - Finer Details: Next, it’s time to weave your Delver’s story. The Time Without Tide: Core Rulebook has plenty of background information, fun tables, and story seeds that will help ground you in the setting. You can also come up with your own ideas and collaborate with the rest of the table to interweave your backstories. You don’t have to lock everything in about your Delver immediately. It’s fine to leave things vague and develop them in greater detail as you go. Speaking of which:

The Final Step - Delver Development: Delver Development is the ongoing, final step of character creation. As you play, you earn experience points, which you can spend to improve your Delver. Each point of XP is significant, but it isn't the only way through which your Delver improves. You also earn lunar dust (currency) which you can use to trade for items. Then, there's adaptations. Although adaptations are negative at first, each one has the potential to become positive if you invest some of your hard earned XP into them. 

You spend XP between adventures while your Delver is taking a 3 day safe rest. We'll go into detail about what you can do with your XP when we talk about player options. For now though, here's a very rough guideline. 

Every time you get a point of XP you can:

That's all for today but we'll be back again soon. Given everybody's enthusiasm in our polls about both player options and lore/setting information, we'll aim to discuss those next. If you have a specific question, please send it through to us.

Thanks again to everybody. The countdown continues!