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Campaign setting · Call of Cthulhu 7e

Temporal Solutions

Modern civilians thrown a century into the past.
Ambrosia puts them to work against the Mythos.

At a glance

What kind of game is this?

Setting

1920s–1930s America

Pulp streets, telegrams, and secrets that still fit in a filing cabinet.

System

Call of Cthulhu 7e

Percentile investigation, Sanity loss, lethal fights — same rules spine.

Tone

Horror · 18+

Death, despair, racism, and sexism appear as period realities and themes.

Beginner-friendly

Built so modern player knowledge is a feature of the fiction, not a table foul.

Before the jump

The end of the world

A worldwide doomsday scenario occurs and all hope is lost. Humanity gambles on an experimental device meant to send a small team about one year into the past to fix it.

What went wrong

Ten kilometers. One hundred years.

Instead of a surgical team hop, the device takes everything in a ~10 km radius back a full century. Your investigators were civilians caught in that accidental time warp.

Curse and blessing

They escaped the end of the world — and must live the rest of their lives in a past they are not used to.

Author’s inspiration

Yithian technology, reversed

Inspired by The Shadow Out of Time: the Great Race of Yith swaps minds across eras. Imagine a modern organization reverse-engineering that trick — experimental, unused — until desperation left no other option.

First contact

The Shadow Mistress

She claims to head the Project that saved you — and explains what has happened.
She speaks for an organization calling itself Ambrosia.

The organization

Ambrosia

Ambrosia recruits the temporally displaced to handle supernatural-related work. All PCs are assumed to work for Ambrosia — alongside a regular day job, if they wish.

Day job

Nurse, reporter, mechanic, academic — cover identities that pay rent.

Night work

Cases Ambrosia assigns: hauntings, cults, artifacts, missing persons.

Loyalty?

Salvation has a price. How much you trust the Shadow Mistress is your story.

Design thesis

Play on what players already know

Cthulhu tables often fight metagame knowledge of the 1920s. Temporal Solutions leans into it: your modern mind is in period clothes. The time jump also gives the campaign an isekai flavor — strangers forced to rebuild a life.

Table contract

Prejudice in the era

At first glance this setting may seem like women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ characters are restricted and discriminated against on every side. Racism and sexism are perennial problems — not easy to solve universally — but here removing those aspects would undermine the themes of the setting.

The Roaring Twenties and pulp Thirties are not meant to be pleasant. Players can, and perhaps should, fight to challenge that status quo — as great people did to create a better world.

Discuss lines and veils before play. Content warnings are not optional flavor.

Who you might be

Displaced investigators

Public pregens on this site include Temporal Solutions casts — copy one, or build your own civilian with a modern past.

Jill Trent

Science, grit, and questions that do not stay buried.

Daisy Smithe Wong

Between cultures, between eras — still sharp.

Rebecca Rodriguez

Street sense that translates even when the decade does not.

Vivian Parks

Presence, polish, and secrets worth keeping.

More faces at the table

Classic & Japan casts

Frigga Lopez

Tina Peterson

Aiko Tanaka

Hiroshi Yamamoto

Browse Investigators → filter Classic 1920s or 1920s Japan → Copy to your account.

How Ambrosia works a case

Investigator guidelines

1. Gather information

Police, hospitals, churches, newspapers, libraries, museums, the scene itself. Build contacts. Talk — and sometimes bribe.

2. Find a motive

Single incident or larger pattern? Who gains? Who have you already met?

3. Make a plan

Resources, allies, exits. Do not assume the horror is unbeatable — or that guns are the answer.

4. Carry it out

Brainpower first. Many scenarios can be solved without a shootout — though Sanity may still burn.

Tactical habits

Stay alive long enough to learn

Watches

Always stand watches on overnight investigations.

Tools

Buy a weapon or improvise one before you need it.

Spells

If you know any, treat them like loaded guns pointed inward.

Disguise

Recognition is a threat. Cover identities matter.

Fleeing

Valid. Often smart. Bravery without a plan is a funeral.

Notes

Write everything. Future-you will thank present-you.

What waits on Ambrosia’s desk

Threats of the Mythos

Cultists

Human faces. Inhuman purpose.

Nightgaunt

Silent wings over the rooftops.

Byakhee

Steeds of the void — and their riders.

Formless Spawn

Black fluidity that wears doorways.

On this site

How Temporal Solutions lives here

Pregens

Browse and copy public Temporal Solutions investigators.

Campaign

Seeded campaign with overview handouts, guidelines, and cases.

System primer

Dice, Sanity, and investigation tone in the Call of Cthulhu deck.

Session zero checklist

Before Ambrosia calls

Agree on

Content lines, veils, and how hard period prejudice hits the spotlight.
How much modern knowledge characters openly use.
Whether Ambrosia is ally, mystery, or both.
What “day job” each investigator keeps.

Bring

A copied pregen or a fresh sheet from the creator.
One personal hook from the future they miss.
One reason they answered the Shadow Mistress.
Willingness to take notes — and lose Sanity honestly.

The telegram is waiting

Report for duty.

Copy an investigator. Open the campaign.
The past is not safer — only quieter, until you listen.

Browse investigators · System primer · About this site

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