Tricube Tales

 

A new university term has started, and while I'm no longer a student, I still like to be involved in some university societies. Especially the roleplaying game society, since that's a good source of players. With this in mind, I'd been itching to introduce more players to a roleplaying system I discovered recently called Tricube Tales. 

Created by Richard Woolcock, Tricube Tales is a narrative-focussed roleplaying system with a bare minimum of mechanics. I've previously talked about this before, specifically with The Fools Who Follow, in which the players are companions to an imbecilic Chosen One hero, but the system's recently been updated since then.

When players do something risky, the GM assigns a Trait - either Agility, Brawn, or Craft - and a Difficulty ranging from 4 to 6. The player must then roll two six-sided dice and equal or exceed the difficulty on at least one die in order to overcome the challenge. If they achieve this on multiple dice, that's treated as an Exceptional Success and carries an additional benefit. However, if they roll a 1 on all their dice, that's a Critical Failure and introduces a complication.

Character creation is quick and easy, which makes this system ideal for one-shots. Rather than a complex stat block, a Player Character can be summed up in a sentence. The character profile consists of four aspects:

1. Trait: A character can be Agile, Brawny, or Crafty. If their Trait matches a challenge's Trait, they roll an extra die on that challenge.
2. Concept: This is typically a character's profession. If a challenge is something that falls outside the scope of their concept (such as a wizard picking a lock or a high school nerd trying to intimidate somebody), they roll one less die.
3. Perk: This is a special talent or ability, or perhaps even a signature item. If it makes narrative sense, a character can activate their Perk to reduce the difficulty by one after making their roll.
4. Quirk: This is some kind of hindrance, physical limitation, or personality flaw. Quirks can be activated just like Perks if it makes narrative sense, but this is done before making a roll and increases the difficulty by one.

Players also have three points of Karma and three points of Resolve.

• Karma represents a character's luck and fortitude. It costs one point of Karma to activate a Perk, but this can be regained by activating a Quirk.
• Resolve represents a character's health and tenacity. A character loses one point of Resolve if they fail a particularly dangerous challenge, and two on a Critical Failure. If they lose all their Resolve, they're out for the rest of the scene.

I've been collecting all manner of settings, having run The Fools Who Follow for the society's taster session. So far, I've tried two other settings which use the system: 

• The first is a superhero setting called Metahuman Uprising. 
• The second is Tales of the Goblin Horde, an adaptation of Woolcock's Saga of the Goblin Horde setting for Savage Worlds. 

Both resulted in some silly moments, but I'm still trying to practice the concept of "Effort Tokens" for things which require more than one roll (especially combat).

I'm also looking at running two more settings in the coming weeks:

• Pirates of the Bone Blade, a Pirates of the Caribbean-inspired fantasy in which the characters are members of a pirate crew seeking to break a curse their former captain left on them.
• Samhain Slaughter, a horror setting in which the players are high school students with paranormal abilities who defend their small town from monsters.

I think Tricube Tales is a great system which offers a lot of flexibility. It's great for one-shots, but I haven't tried running a campaign with it. If you're interested, you can find the rulebook here.

Happy writing.