Chaosium’s crowdfunding campaign for its new tabletop roleplaying game, Time Without Tide: Mirth & Misery in a World of Fog, has crossed $189,000 on BackerKit, advancing toward its $200,000 stretch goal. The project funded its modest $10,000 baseline in just 12 minutes on launch day and currently counts more than 1,460 backers, with 12 days remaining before the campaign concludes on 24 September 2026.
Designed by David Naylor and James Coquillat, with art direction from Ty Carey (co-founder of League of Geeks), the setting depicts an atmospheric, faux-Victorian post-apocalypse triggered by the physical collapse of the moon. This cataclysm ushered in the World of Fog, plunging society out of an opulent “Age of Decadence” into survivalist isolation. Players adopt the mantle of Delvers, lantern-bearing mercenaries, scrap-hunters, and outcasts who strike out from settlements like Saltport into the murk to combat aberrant monsters, salvage technological relics, and rescue stranded communities.
Rather than relying on Chaosium’s signature Basic Roleplaying percentile d100 engine, Time Without Tide employs an accessible, action-oriented dice pool mechanic built from the ground up:
- Trait and Skill Pools: Action resolution pairs one of three foundational Traits (Body, Mind, Will) directly with one of six specialised Skills (Culture, Industry, Navigation, Skulduggery, Survival, Violence). Combining Trait and Skill values yields a pool of standard six-sided dice.
- Success Criteria (Marks): Players roll their accumulated d6 pool and count each roll of a 5 or 6 as a “mark”. Matching or beating the obstacle’s difficulty rating secures success, whilst failing to reach the mark threshold triggers failure or costly complications.
- Delver Backgrounds: Characters begin by defining their former lives, such as disgraced bureaucrats, prizefighters, alchemists, corsairs, or corpse thieves, which establish starting competencies, social connections, and proficiencies.
- Customisation and Corruption: Delvers expand their tactical footprint by equipping Items, mastering rule-altering Features, and mutating through supernatural Adaptations. While Adaptations confer potent magical or biological abilities necessary to combat the horrors of the fog, using them steadily erodes the character’s remaining humanity.
The crowdfunding tier architecture covers straightforward digital entry points, standard physical editions, and boxed collector configurations:
- Digital Delver ($20): Digital entry tier delivering the complete Core Rulebook in DRM-free PDF format, distributed via DriveThruRPG.
- Delver ($50): The standard physical edition, providing the 250+ page Core Rulebook in hardcover format alongside the complimentary digital PDF edition.
- Fancy Delver ($110): The deluxe physical collector’s edition of the Core Rulebook, bound in textured cloth and stamped with a glow-in-the-dark crossed-shovel-and-key motif of the Delvers’ Guild, packaged with the PDF.
- Guildmaster ($160): A comprehensive gameplay collection containing standard hardcover editions of both the Core Rulebook and the 100+ page Into the Fog adventure anthology (with corresponding PDFs), plus the Delver Decks (over 400 reference cards for items, features, and adaptations) and the Keeper Pack (three-panel GM screen, battle maps, reference handouts, and cardstock tokens).
- Fancy Guildmaster ($335): The premium backer tier containing collector’s editions of both the Core Rulebook and Into the Fog (both featuring unique textured glow-in-the-dark covers and PDFs), the Delver Decks, the Keeper Pack, a 12-piece engraved smoky black-and-green D6 dice set, and a complete physical set of pre-gen and monster miniatures sculpted by Titan Forge.
- Merchant ($390, Retail Only): A verified bricks-and-mortar retailer package bundling four physical copies each of the Core Rulebook, Into the Fog, Delver Decks, and Keeper Packs, inclusive of complimentary retailer freight.
The campaign’s trajectory has unlocked a wide succession of stretch milestones. Backers have already cleared expanded background lore dossiers, double-sided regional poster maps of Saltport illustrated by Marc Moureau, dual ribbon bookmarks bound into all physical editions, digital STL files and physical casts of the Dowsing Odd and Not-Papa miniatures, and a dedicated free digital Roll20 conversion of the introductory quickstart. Crucially, the $100,000 milestone secured an original bonus scenario written by fantasy author George Mann (Newbury & Hobbes, Warhammer 40,000, Doctor Who), integrated directly into all print and digital copies of Into the Fog.
Backer participation continues to drive content development. After a tight digital ballot in which The Sentinel background secured 37% of the backer vote against The Romantic (32%) and The Explorer (31%), Chaosium launched an active second-round poll. Backers are currently voting between The Mercenary, The Gambler, and The Investigator to decide which character origin receives an expanded mechanics-and-lore treatment in a digital supplement once the $200,000 stretch goal is breached.
Fulfilment is scheduled to conclude by 30 September 2027. Physical delivery will operate via Chaosium’s established regional shipping hubs across the UK, European Union, United States, Canada, Australia, and China to minimise import duties, whilst digital distributions will be fulfilled through DriveThruRPG upon release.
Quick Links
- BackerKit: Time Without Tide
- DriveThruRPG: Free Quickstart
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