TTRPG Thoughts: Ebb Tide

Ebb Tide is a solo journaling TTRPG by Stephen Kohler that uses the Wretched & Alone SRD inspired by the creations of Chris Bissette. In a nutshell, the game focuses on the single survivor of a shipwide massacre who finds themself in far too close of contact with the eldritch being that has awoken from its slumber and is rising from the ocean's floor. There is no way forward but through one's own madness, and very little hope of survival.

I made a mistake in choosing to start this game at two o'clock in the morning.

First of all, this is a game where the odds of "winning" (i.e., besting or banishing the eldritch being) are very slim. Most likely, the player character will descend into madness and die. The real question that Stephen poses is, "can you make your death have any meaning?"

Heed the content warnings! These include but are not limited to: isolation, despair, ritual suicide, insanity, and death. This game does not have built-in multiplayer options and is solely single player, although I think Ebb Tide would be even more amazing if it could be adapted for a group setting.

As a solo TTRPG, however, Ebb Tide still excels. I decided to go fully historical and set my character's journal in June and July of 1887, and had a lot of fun playing with a slightly more antiquated style of prose than I typically use. The game mostly supports a more historical setting, although there is one prompt about a radio that I had to discard.

Required supplies for this game are a single d6 die, a standard deck of playing cards with the jokers removed, tokens such as buttons, beads, or game pieces, and a tumbling block tower. I was lucky enough to have a Jenga set in the basement of my parents' house—but for those who don't have access to such things, you can find virtual Jenga games online. There are also virtual dice rollers as well as virtual card decks that you can draw from. The tumbling block tower represents the player character's sanity; every time they experience something particularly horrific or otherwise mind-breaking, you pull one (or more!) blocks from the tower. The game is over when/if the tower collapses... or for a variety of other reasons that I don't want to give away; Ebb Tide is fiendishly difficult.

I knew that this game was going to be almost impossible to beat well before I started, but as I got further and further along I clung tighter and tighter to my slim hope of seeing my character survive her experience aboard the cultists' charnel house of a ship. I usually play more whimsical, low-stakes solo journaling games (like Apothecaria), but the fact that I knew how much the odds were stacked against me really made me pay attention and agonize over what little I could control. Although in the above paragraph I suggested use of a virtual Jenga game if a physical tumbling block tower is unavailable, I found that my experience was very enriched by using a physical one and having that tactile element.

Also, my tumbling block tower was situated on the floor, and every time my wantonly destructive cat so much as looked at it I swear my heart started racing in my chest. PALPABLE FEAR:

My only real critique of Ebb Tide is my usual one, which is that there is no version of the game that uses a more dyslexic-friendly font such as Open Dyslexic. There is, however, a print-friendly version that increases the contrast between the text and page background, which is a nice touch. It's possible that a dyslexic-friendly version of the PDF will arrive sometime in the future, for which I am happy to wait; in my opinion, Ebb Tide is definitely worth it. I had an absolute blast with this game and can't wait to play more Wretched & Alone games.