Chaosium, the house that built Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, and Pendragon, has not launched an original IP in thirty years. They just ended that streak. Time Without Tide: Mirth & Misery in the World of Fog is a faux-Victorian, post-apocalyptic steampunk TTRPG where the moon is gone, the cities are rubble, and an evil capital-F Fog covers what’s left. You are a Delver: lantern in hand, venturing beyond the fortified walls into a world that mutates anything it touches. The BackerKit campaign goes live August 11th, but the free 60-page Quickstart is already waiting for you on their pre-launch page right now.

The new system ditches Chaosium’s signature d100 BRP in favor of a d6 dice pool, promising tactical miniatures combat alongside the character-driven weirdness you’d expect from a studio that made a career out of putting investigators in basements with unknowable horrors. Designers David Naylor and James Coquillat describe it as a world where “being weird is the whole point” and your “bonkers build isn’t broken.” The Doctor approves of this philosophy on a deeply personal level. It has robots, mutant powers, a Victorian aesthetic, and a cosmological catastrophe as the inciting incident. The Omega7Red Formulae might as well have written this setting brief.

Grab the Quickstart, follow the BackerKit, and keep your lantern lit. Whatever killed the moon is still out there. Via: TTRPG Fans

Felicia Day just did something the internet desperately needed: she brought back The Guild. Not a reboot, not a remake, not a soulless streaming-service cash-grab. A fan-funded reunion movie, titled The Guild: Ren Faire’d, crowdfunded on Kickstarter, and it hit $2.7 million in pledges before anyone had time to dust off their old WoW subscription. The full original cast is back: Codex, Zaboo, Vork, Tink, Clara, Bladezz (the Knights of Good, for those of you who were living under a rock between 2007 and 2013), and the adventure this time drops them directly into a Renaissance Faire. A RENAISSANCE FAIRE. As if those people needed an excuse to wear more elaborate cosplay and argue about historically accurate mead.

The campaign closes August 21, and the reward tiers include a TTRPG supplement for D&D 5.5E (the Dragonor Campaign Setting, written by cast member Vince Caso and published by Hit Point Press, featuring monsters, subclasses, carnivorous outhouses, and a pirate named Cheesybeard). The Omega7Red Formulae has been waiting years for someone to apply it to a Ren Faire and actually get the budget to do it right. Felicia Day figured it out first. High-5, Codex. The campaign is live now at the link below, and the movie is set to debut in 2027, right on the 20th anniversary. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but apparently crowdfunding comes close.

Via: The Guild: Ren Faire’d on Kickstarter

Someone at Somanyrobots Games asked the right question: what if the Industrial Revolution ran on reanimated corpses instead of coal and steam? The answer is Machines of Bone & Blood, a 5E/5.5E sourcebook set inside a Necroindustrial Revolution, where skeletal constructs are replacing living workers, necrobarons run factory floors staffed by the freshly dead, and the tagline is literally “Fight the Necroindustrial Revolution!” The Doctor approves. That is the Omega7Red Formulae applied to labor history, and it is glorious.

The book clocks in at 300-plus pages of necrocrafting rules, two new classes, twenty-odd subclasses, spells, monsters, and mini-settings you can drop straight into an existing campaign. The art is all human-made (the publisher has a firm no-AI policy, which earns them a bonus half-Omega just on principle). The Kickstarter already funded at nearly five times its goal before closing on July 9th, so late pledges are your move now. Via: Kickstarter

Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but a factory floor run by a necrobaron and his army of bone-machines comes remarkably close. ΩΩΩΩ½ before I’ve even rolled a single die.

Someone in France just shipped a cozy, pocket-sized steampunk RPG in a box and I’m unreasonably pleased about it. Nobi Nobi Steampunk is one of two new adventure settings (the other being Cyberpunk, naturally) for the Nobi Nobi tabletop system: a fast, cinematic party game that gets you into a story in minutes. No 400-page rulebook. No character optimization spreadsheet. You strap on the clockwork goggles, load the electropistol, fire up the steamwagon, and go. The whole thing is modular too: mix and match with the Fantasy, Horror, and Thriller boxes because sure, why not, a steampunk horror thriller is basically Tuesday around here.

The Formula has always held that SteamPunk is a delivery mechanism for adventure, not a homework assignment. A tiny box that drops a table of people into gears-and-steam mayhem in under ten minutes? The Doctor approves. BackerKit late pledges are still open, rewards ship end of 2026. Get on it. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, so you might as well spend the time rolling dice.

Chaosium, the house that gave us Call of Cthulhu and a respectable body count of player characters, just announced a brand-new tabletop RPG: Time Without Tide. The setting is a fog-choked, post-apocalyptic faux-Victorian world overrun with robots, magic, and (presumably) orphans with serious anger management issues. You play a Delver: someone whose job description is basically “go outside into the horrifying Fog and find out what’s in it.” Spoiler: it’s probably not a tea party.

And here’s the part that has The Doctor’s attention: they’re not using BRP. This is a whole new engine, purpose-built for tactical combat and what the BackerKit page calls “highly customisable character development” (vehicles, gear, companions, mutant powers). So Chaosium built a steampunk game from scratch instead of just bolting Victorian hats onto their existing system. That is either brilliantly committed or magnificently ambitious. Possibly both. The Formula approves of both.

It’s not live yet; the BackerKit campaign is coming. Watch the pre-launch page, get on the list, and tell them The Doctor sent you. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but a well-timed crowdfunding notification is a solid third place.

Via: Bell of Lost Souls