Specters of Locksworth: Another Tricube Tales collaboration

Last month, I published another collaborative effort with Just Insert Imagination, this time based on a setting they've not yet released. As usual, Morne provided the text for the scenario, while I did the editing and layout.

You can get it here: Specters of Locksworth

The scenario was originally called simply "Specters", but a single-word name isn't great for search engines, and it is more likely to have a name conflict with other games, so I proposed "Specters of Locksworth" (as it was set in the fictional city of Locksworth).

The original draft only had 6 concepts, perks, and quirks, so I increased them to 7 to match the other one-pagers, and reworked a few. For example, I changed "overconfident" to "curious", as "overconfident" was quite similar to "reckless". I also replaced some of the perks, as "sharpshooter" felt too specific for the scenario, "social butterfly" didn't feel like something that would be used very often, etc. I replaced "iron will" as well, as that's a perk I try to avoid because it's purely reactive, which can make it difficult to tie into the narrative when the player is actively doing something.

One of my concerns was that it might feel too similar to Ghost Banishers, so I tried to give it a different vibe, more "Exorcist" than "Ghostbusters" -- I used artwork that better emphasized that feel, and changed Locksworth from a city to a creepy old town. Mechanics-wise, I left out the references to effort tokens, as that's something I usually only mention in the more combat-focused one-pagers, and Specters of Locksworth is more investigative. Ghost Banishers does reference effort tokens, so this once again helped give it a slightly different feel.

I also added a section on character motives in the bottom-left corner. This is something I've done in a few of my other recent one-pagers as well, as I've found it's a nice way to add a bit more flavor to the starting characters.

For the twist table, I tried to use different icons to Ghost Banishers, although there were a couple of duplicates. Having different icons is particularly nice for people who like combining multiple one-pagers, as they can use both twist tables for an expanded set of icons.

While Specters of Locksworth and Ghost Banishers are designed to have a different feel, they're similar enough thematically that they could certainly be combined into an expanded ghost hunting scenario! 

Sylvan Sentinels: Another TT one-pager set in the same world as SotGH

In December last year, I mentioned that I wanted to release a one-pager about elves this year, set in the same (SotGH) world as Minerunners and Sharp Knives & Dark Streets. I had originally planned to call it Woodland Wardens, but that name was already in use, so I toyed with Woodland Sentinels -- until Jesse Ross (on the Zadmar Games Discord) suggested Sylvan Sentinels.

You can get it here: Sylvan Sentinels!

I included a Six-Scene Scenario called Battle at the Forest Border, which covered one of the major events prior to the beginning of the SotGH campaign -- the destruction of the Treebiter goblin tribe. In this case, the players get to play the elves (or "forest humans" as the goblins call them) who destroy the tribe, meaning the scenario can even be played as a sort of prequel to Saga of the Goblin Horde!

A few months ago, I published Tomb Guardians, which included a Tricube Tactics scenario, and I thought it would be fun to do something similar again, except on a smaller scale. Most of the other Six-Scene Scenarios I've written offer three different boss fights for the Showdown scene, but I decided to do it a little differently in Battle at the Forest Border, and provide a single boss fight, but with guidelines for running it with either the base Tricube Tales rules or the Tricube Tactics combat supplement.

I picked up as many of Dean Spencer's elf illustrations as I could find (I still have a lot of credits for supporting him on Patreon, so I might as well use them!) and was able to put together 15 form-fillable character cards. These cards have the same Tricube Tactics design as the ones in Tomb Guardians (with knacks and minions), although they're only single-coded. 

Sylvan Sentinels will definitely be turned into a SWADE micro-setting as well!

Wicked Dreams: My PocketQuest 2025 submission

DriveThruRPG has been running the PocketQuest game jam for a few years now, and each year I submit a Tricube Tales one-page RPG for it: Summer Camp Slayers in 2022, Paths Between the Stars in 2023, and Conniving Cat Burglars in 2024. Technically, PocketQuest allows games up to 25 pages, but the DriveThruRPG staff stresses that's the limit, not a goal, so I prefer to aim for something much smaller.

My PocketQuest 2025 submission is Wicked Dreams, and the product went live this month!

The PocketQuest 2025 theme was "dreams & nightmares", so I decided to draw inspiration from horror movies such as "Friday the 13th", "Hellraiser", and "A Nightmare on Elm Street". However, rather than playing as the heroes, in this scenario, the players take on the role of the monstrous villains.

Due to its thematic similarities to Twisted Wishes and Sundered Chains, I decided to give Wicked Dreams the same trade dress and turn them into a trilogy (much like I did with the three "Eldritch" one-pagers). I'd already considered creating some character cards for Twisted Wishes and Sundered Chains in the past, so this allowed me to release them with Wicked Dreams. And there are 13 character cards, of course!

There is also a tie-in with Summer Camp Slayers, which is set in the same fictional summer camp as one of the locations on the second page of Wicked Dreams.

Tomb Guardians: Showcasing the Tricube Tactics combat system

Last month, I finally finished and published Tomb Guardians, which I'd been working on for about nine months! I'd mostly finished (and even shared on my Discord server) the main one-page RPG version back in August last year, but as a "tower defense" scenario I felt it had a very different setup to the other one-pagers and could greatly benefit from an example adventure -- and while working on that, I realized Tomb Guardians would make a great Tricube Tactics tie-in, showcasing the expanded combat rules.

I used the first page of the adventure to explain how to modify the characters and customize the scenes (based on the results of the adventure generator from the main one-pager), with the scenes themselves described on the second page. My usual Six-Scene Scenario didn't seem a good fit for this one-pager, so "Tomb Guardians: The Invasion" has only three scenes: Entrance (when the intruders enter the tomb), Exploration (when they explore the tomb), and Showdown (the final battle). The first and second scenes use regular Tricube Tales challenges, while the third scene is a Tricube Tactics combat encounter.

The main reason Tomb Guardians took so long to publish is that I wanted to thoroughly playtest it before release, and I initially found it far too deadly. Eventually, I settled on giving the PCs three minion tokens to increase their survival rate, along with a second knack to help showcase more of the character abilities from Tricube Tactics, and that seemed to hit the sweet spot; combat was challenging, but not insurmountable.

I created character cards for Tomb Guardians, as I've done for many other one-pagers, but these ones have a new design with sections for minion tokens and knacks. I also added a second side for each card, with gameplay advice tailored to each character. The PCs in Tomb Guardians don't have names, so I used the name section at the top to describe each character.

Finally, I originally wanted to create a tutorial video, but I realized I lacked the skillset to do it justice. I even tried creating some PowerPoint slides, thinking I could add a voice-over and then turn it into a video, but the results were embarrassing, so in the end I decided to stick with what I know: I created a 12-page example playthrough PDF, serving as a full walkthrough of the adventure from beginning to end.

I even had the opportunity to play Tomb Guardians as a player last week, GMed by Skeffington Liquorish (from the Zadmar Games Discord server), and that was good fun! I played the wraith, the other two players were the construct and the vampire, and we had to fight off a necromancer who had broken into the tomb with his apprentice and an undead army. The final combat was quite tough, but we emerged victorious!

Rabbit Tales: An Easter collaboration

Earlier this month, Laurence MacNaughton (a member of my Discord server) contacted me asking if I'd be interested in publishing Rabbit Tales, a Tricube Tales scenario he'd written for the Easter holidays! It looked great, and I thought it would be fun to release something special for Easter, so I agreed to do the layout, editing, and promotion.

Get it here: Rabbit Tales

Rabbit Tales draws inspiration from Watership Down, and I still remember being traumatized by the original animated version as a child! An interesting piece of trivia: Watership Down is a real place in southern England, around 35 miles from where I grew up.

It proved very difficult to find any suitable artwork for Rabbit Tales, so in the end, I had to use a public domain image from an 1875 book of animals. The original illustration showed a mother rabbit with her kittens, which didn't really fit the vibe, so I cropped out the larger mother to make it look like a colony of rabbits.

Laurence also provided an adventure called "Rabbit Tales: A Grim Omen", which had a different format to my usual Six-Scene Scenarios, and the layout proved quite challenging. I ended up rearranging the text so the scenes were all on the first page, and they referenced tables on the second page. Having done this once, I rather like it, and I may try using the same layout again in the future.

It's certainly fun to collaborate with other writers, although it's not something I would do too often, due to time constraints.

Metal Gods of the Apocalypse

Last year, Eric Lamoureux ran a Kickstarter for his latest project, Metal Gods of the Apocalypse. To quote the Kickstarter, it's a "system-agnostic TTRPG mini-campaign setting about the wasteland, demon slayers, and heavy metal music." I backed it on Kickstarter, and it's a pretty cool (and unusual) setting that's definitely worth checking out.

Although the setting is system-agnostic, Morne also promised the backers a Tricube Tales adaption. He sent me the draft version, which I edited and formatted into a full Tricube Tales one-page RPG. The Tricube Tales adaption went live last month, and yesterday I received the print proof for the print-on-demand version, so now that's been set to public as well.

I normally use color artwork for Tricube Tales one-pagers, but in this case, I only had access to black-and-white line art. However, I think it came out rather nicely.

Like several of the newer one-pagers, Metal Gods of the Apocalypse separates "trait" and "style".

You can download the Tricube Tales version of Metal Gods of the Apocalypse from here and, as usual, the full PDF is available as the Publisher Preview.

Eldritch Cultists: Changing a metagame currency without changing the mechanics

Metagame currencies are one of those things that some people love and others hate, but "karma" is a core part of the Tricube Tales game mechanics and not easily removed—it fuels perks, and it is recovered using quirks.

I originally envisioned karma as symbolising the PC borrowing (and paying back) luck, which is admittedly rather a metagame concept, but it doesn't have to represent that, and I've wondered for a while how I might provide an in-game justification for the same game mechanic. One obvious solution would be to treat karma as "mana", particularly if the perk represents magical powers, but how would you justify recovering mana from quirks?

A couple of weeks ago, I published Eldritch Cultists, which is set in the same world as Eldritch Detectives and Eldritch Apocalypse—except that this time, you play as the bad guys! In Eldritch Cultists, I attempted to tackle the metagame currency described above by renaming "karma" to "mana", "perks" to "sorcery", and "quirks" to "sins".

The cultists' patron grants them mana when they indulge in sins, and the cultists can then invest that mana into strengthening their dark sorcery. I don't consider mana a "metagame currency" because it's something the characters are aware of within the world, yet mechanically, it works exactly the same way as karma.

This makes me wonder in what other ways it might be handled. Perhaps karma could represent stamina for fueling physical perks—although, once again, I'm not sure how you'd handle quirks in that situation.