Cypher System vs Tricube Tales
Compare Cypher System and Tricube Tales side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Cypher System | Tricube Tales | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Universal | Universal |
| Play Style | Narrative, Low-Prep, Exploration, Cinematic, Collaborative, Theater of the Mind, Roleplay-Heavy | Rules-Light, Player-Only Rolls, Narrative, Toolkit, Beginner-Friendly, Family, Open Source |
| Core Mechanic | GM sets difficulty 1–10, multiply by 3 for target number. Players spend Effort to reduce difficulty. | 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 | d20 | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | Low | Low |
| Accessibility | Very High | Very High |
| Runnability | Very High | Medium |
| License | Cypher System Open License | CC BY 3.0 |
| Cost | $$ | Free / $ |
| Publisher | Monte Cook Games | Zadmar Games |
| Year | 2019 | 2026 |
| Best For | GMs who want minimal prep and players who enjoy spending resources to shape the story. | 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 | Very easy GM prep, flexible character descriptors, XP for discovery | 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 | Players track most complexity, limited tactical combat, can feel same-y | 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. |