Oh man, Out of Time (2019) is so good. I like the smaller mysteries and short arcs, but by the time this came out I was really hankering to see what an extended play Tales from the Loop mystery looks like and holy wow this delivers. It’s full to the top with the sort of stuff that is gonna have your players knocking over chairs and howling.

Before I get to the meat of it, though, let me talk about the general material in the back of the book. First is a collection of locations for a Mystery Landscape, TftL’s free-form, hub-based sandbox play, which basically provides places for players to explore and organically tease out mysteries. There are also more formal scenario seeds, mostly feeling keyed to the teenager version of the game, Things from the Flood (there is one about symbiotic sex aliens and another in which the Loop’s gravitron gain sentience. Finally, there is the mystery machine, a nicely designed set of tables for generating new mysteries. These three things alone could have been a really hand book!

The campaign is spread across three chapters that likely will not feel interconnected, at first. As the title of the book implies, the story involves time travel. I don’t love time travel as a general rule but the way this is structured around a central mystery and, later, a very high stakes endgame, makes it work. Oh, and it features a villain who is also a key ally, and I won’t tell you in which order. The way they constantly appear and reappear with different agendas and forms is just, absolutely delightful. Plus, we finally get to go into the Loop facility. PLUS, plus, the second scenario takes place at summer camp. In the ’60s. ARGH, so good.

Again, the game is butting right up against territory that I feel like is firmly under control of Delta Green, but never feels like a horror game. It’s a mystery and it is an adventure in the truest sense and the ways in which the game sticks to that is really fascinating to see.