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Discussion Prompt: Handsome Young Dugong is back this week with a TTRPG system review!

Hey everybody, it’s time for another TTRPG overview, this time with a system that’s less a single game and more of a symbiotic colony of smaller games, Tricube Tales. 

What is it?

Tricube tales is the core system behind a huge number of one-page RPGs by a single developer.  If you can imagine a setting that might have a tv show, movie, or totally unrelated game, there’s probably a Tricube Tales for it.  Fan of Star Wars?  There’s a Tricube Tale that looks suspiciously like Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off.  Can’t stop reading Neuromancer?  There’s a Tricube for that.  Just dusted off your VHS of Backdraft and desperately want to be a firefighter?  Tricube away!

 What are the mechanics?

The main mechanic revolves around hitting a target number with a d6; your traits may give you extra dice, and more descriptive perks and an expendable resource called karma may make the target number easier or more difficult to hit.  Success or failure moves the story forward much like PbtA games. 

What does the gameplay look like?

Han Duo and Totally-Not-Chewbacca are pinned down by laser fire by the stormsoldiers of the Imperium.  Han decides to shoot the controls to the nearby blast door, which the GM says will be an Agile – trait challenge of 6.  Han smirks, because agile is his middle name.  He invokes his “gunslinger” perk and spends a point of karma, and then rolls three dice.  The dice come up 1, 2, and 5, meeting the lowered challenge number, so the shot hits the door control and seals off the stormsoldiers.  Han radios to Non Mothma that he’s on his way back to the base with the plans for the copyright-friendly giant star base and he and Not-Chewbacca board the Eon Hawk.

Niche

Tricube is a good system to have on deck for those moments when you want to play a genre game in a hurry.  Each individual tale has a page of random tables and visual plot hooks for inspiration, so it’s pretty low-prep. 

Pluses

• A fairly painless ruleset makes it easy to pick up, and once you’ve learned one game you know them all
• One of the tales has a group of fantasy adventurers trying desperately to corral a drunken, spoiled, degenerate “chosen one” long enough to do his job, which always gives me a chortle.

Minuses

• While the individual one-pagers are hard to find fault with, I would really like to rearrange some of the text in the core rulebook.
• The individual games aren’t expensive, but they aren’t free, so all those fifty cent games may add up.

Dugong’s advice

If you are of the “Be [Overly] Prepared” mindset, find a Tricube Tale that speaks to you, print it, slap a few post-it notes on it, and put it in your notebook/purse/glove compartment.  There may come a day when you’ve got some time to kill and you’ll thank that random dugong on the internet.

Where can I find it?

You’ll find various degrees of print and digital on DriveThruRPG, although there’s one random free tale on itch.io.

Thanks again to Handsome Young Dugong for providing this write-up! If you would like to suggest a prompt or contribute a write-up or discussion topic of your own, let me know in the comments!