Fate Core vs Tricube Tales
Compare Fate Core and Tricube Tales side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Fate Core | Tricube Tales | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Universal | Universal |
| Tags | Narrative, Fiction-First, Character-Driven, Collaborative, Tag-Based, Toolkit, Worldbuilding, Rules-Light, Social Combat, Strong GM Support | Rules-Light, Player-Only Rolls, Narrative, Toolkit, Beginner-Friendly, Family-Friendly, CC-Licensed Rules |
| Core Mechanic | Roll four Fate dice and add a skill rating to compare with the opposition. Spend Fate points to invoke a relevant aspect for +2 or a reroll. Accept an aspect-based complication to gain a Fate point. | 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 | 4dF | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | Low | Low |
| Accessibility | Very High | Very High |
| Runnability | Very High | Medium |
| License | CC BY 3.0 (SRD) | CC BY 3.0 |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Open license | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | Free | Free |
| Publisher | Evil Hat Productions | Zadmar Games |
| Year | 2013 | 2026 |
| Languages | English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian | English |
| Best For | Groups who want to build their own setting and follow capable heroes through personal complications and dramatic conflicts. | 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 | Compels turn character weaknesses into story complications that earn Fate points. Creating advantages gives allies free aspect invocations to combine for decisive actions. Conceding a conflict preserves some control over defeat and earns Fate points for later scenes. | 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 | Aspect use depends on agreement about which fictional details apply. Full character and setting creation can take an entire session. Magic and other extras require group decisions about permissions and costs. | 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. |