Cortex Prime vs Tricube Tales
Compare Cortex Prime and Tricube Tales side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Cortex Prime | Tricube Tales | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Universal | Universal |
| Play Style | Narrative, Modular, Collaborative, Toolkit, Roleplay-Heavy, Character-Driven, Tag-Based | Rules-Light, Player-Only Rolls, Narrative, Toolkit, Beginner-Friendly, Family, Open Source |
| Core Mechanic | Assemble a dice pool from trait sets (attributes, skills, relationships, etc.) rated d4–d12. Roll the pool, keep the two highest for your total vs. opposition, then choose an Effect Die from the remainder to determine magnitude. Plot Points let players add dice, activate abilities, or alter the narrative. Every mechanical element is a swappable mod. | Players roll one to three six-sided dice against a difficulty of 4 to 6 and succeed if any single die meets or beats it. The pool comes from the archetype: 3d6 when the character's trait fits the challenge, 2d6 when it does not, and one die fewer when the task falls outside their concept. Succeeding on two or three dice is an exceptional success, and rolling all ones is a critical failure. Players make every roll, including defense, so the GM never rolls dice. Karma tokens lower a difficulty by 1 or fuel a perk, while declaring a quirk raises it by 1 to earn karma back. |
| Dice | d4–d12 dice pool | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | Medium | Low |
| Accessibility | High | Very High |
| Runnability | Very High | Medium |
| License | Cortex Creator License | CC BY 3.0 |
| Cost | $$ | Free / $ |
| Publisher | Dire Wolf Digital | Zadmar Games |
| Year | 2020 | 2026 |
| Best For | GMs who want to build a custom system from modular parts: homebrew designers, genre-mixers, and groups tired of forcing their stories into a pre-built framework. | Tables that switch settings often and want one ruleset to cover all of them, or groups introducing children and first-time players who need rules with no arithmetic. |
| Highlights | Highly modular: 18+ mods for core rules alone, clear writing with worked examples, Plot Point economy creates dynamic give-and-take, powered well-known licensed games (Marvel Heroic, Firefly, Leverage) | Players roll to attack and to defend while the GM never touches the dice, which keeps the GM focused on describing the world rather than resolving it. Declaring a quirk raises a challenge's difficulty but refunds a karma token, giving players a mechanical reason to drag their own flaws into a scene. Eleven optional genre modules cover magic, superpowers, vehicles, and mass battles, so one ruleset stretches across settings without a second book. |
| Considerations | Not playable out of the box: requires significant GM assembly, steep learning curve to understand which mods fit your game, every roll involves choosing which dice to keep plus an Effect Die which slows resolution | The GM assigns every difficulty and adjudicates what each perk can do, so outcomes rest on one person's consistency rather than on written rules. Characters are built from a single archetype, perk, and quirk, which leaves little mechanical distinction between two PCs who share a trait. Gear grants no bonuses and exists only to justify what a character can attempt, so equipment choices never change the dice. |