Freeform Universal vs Tricube Tales
Compare Freeform Universal and Tricube Tales side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Freeform Universal | Tricube Tales | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Universal | Universal |
| Tags | Rules-Light, Narrative, Improvisation, One-Shot Friendly, Beginner-Friendly, Toolkit, Player-Only Rolls, CC-Licensed Rules | Rules-Light, Player-Only Rolls, Narrative, Toolkit, Beginner-Friendly, Family-Friendly, CC-Licensed Rules |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a d6 and read it as a yes/no answer to a stated question: 6 = yes and (a bonus), 4 = yes, 2 = yes but (a cost), 5 = no but, 3 = no, 1 = no and (it worsens). Each Descriptor, item of Gear, or factor that helps adds a bonus die and you keep the best; each that hinders adds a penalty die and you keep the worst; helping and hindering dice cancel one-for-one. FU Points buy extra dice or re-rolls, and only players roll. | 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 | d6 | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | Very Low | Low |
| Availability | Free core rules | Free core rules |
| Runnability | 3 of 5 book tools | 4 of 5 book tools |
| License | CC BY 4.0 | CC BY 3.0 |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Not yet researched |
| Publisher | Peril Planet | Zadmar Games |
| Year | 2020 | 2026 |
| Languages | English | English |
| Best For | Groups who want to improvise a story in any genre with almost no prep, and pick-up or one-shot games where character creation needs to take minutes. | 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 | Every roll answers a yes/no question on a six-step ladder, so one d6 produces graded outcomes from "yes, and" to "no, and" without separate hit, damage, or opposed rolls. Characters are built from four plain-language Descriptors plus Gear the table reads literally, so any setting plays with no stat conversion. Situational advantage adds bonus or penalty dice that cancel one-for-one and keep the single best or worst result, collapsing all modifiers into one step. | 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 | Outcomes hinge on table agreement about whether a Descriptor applies, so play depends on shared interpretation rather than fixed numbers. There is no default combat, health, or damage subsystem, so injuries are tracked as freeform Conditions and lethality is left to the group. Advancement is minimal, so long campaigns give characters little mechanical growth. | 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. |