Time Tails looks like a Doctor Who RPG for furries

If you love the time-travelling timey-wimey-ness of Doctor Who, but always felt that the Doctor would’ve looked better in a pair of cat ears, do I have the tabletop RPG for you. Time Tails is a delightful-looking RPG about hopping through history as a party of cats. More Bob & Tom than Bill & Ted, if you will.

Time Tails takes inspiration from the likes of Doctor Who, the Bill & Ted series and Back to the Future in its eighties-inspired artwork and atmosphere, with players creating characters from ten classes spread across time and space to equip with magical items - yes, a Sonic Screwdriver is here - and straight-up spells, known as Powers that Alter Time (PATs) in the RPG’s lingo and powered by Chrono Crystals.

The party of time-travellers can explore a variety of different historical settings, with ten different settings - from Victorian England to ‘60s America - and dozens of creatures you might encounter there detailed in the game’s upcoming 200-plus-page rulebook. Joining them on their journeys might be familiars and some famous faces from Mozart to George Washington turned into cats included alongside lore on the game’s universe and its inhabitants.

While the RPG's gameplay was originally announced as using the familiar rules of Dungeons & Dragons 5E, Snowbright has since confirmed to Dicebreaker that Time Tails will now utilise a unique system centred around the use of four-sided dice. The gameplay includes rolls to introduce the wibbly-wobbly effects of paradoxes and other ripples from moving through time.

Time Tails started life in RPG publisher Snowbright Studio’s Cozy Companion magazine, featuring a lighter set of rules and adventure The Mystery of Mothcat. Next month’s issue of the magazine will offer a scenario from Eisner-winning comics artist and writer Colleen Doran (celebrated for her adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Snow, Glass, Apples) in which Time Tails’ canon heroes Ari and Zoe meet computing pioneer Ada Lovelace.

Time Tails will hit Kickstarter on February 20th, following Snowbright’s charming tea-and-roleplaying collection Teatime Adventures and existential RPG Ink.

Update: This article originally stated that Time Tails would use a system based on D&D 5E. Snowbright has since confirmed that it will now use an original d4 system. The article has been updated to reflect this.