The R’lyeh-Team (Tricube Tales)

I didn't release a one-page RPG last month, as I hit writer's block with the one I was working on (Dead of Winter) and needed to switch to something else to clear my head. Instead, I decided to pick up an old idea I proposed in 2023, inspired by The A-Team and R'lyehwatch (a Tricube Tales product by my friends at Hedgemaze Press), and I released it just a few days ago: The R'lyeh-Team!

This one renames perks and quirks to sorcery and sins, and also replaces karma with mana, very much like Eldritch Cultists. However, it also renames resolve to cool, mostly to tie in with the tongue-in-cheek rule about earning cool for walking away from explosions (a reference to Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions by The Lonely Island).

It ended up taking me longer than I originally expected, although a large part of that was finding suitable artwork (I ended up photobashing a few stock art pieces together). I also struggled to find the right tone, as I wanted it to be humorous without being outright silly. But I'm pleased with the way it turned out!

I had initially thought about setting The R’lyeh-Team in the same shared world as Goblin Gangsters and Road Hogs, as I wanted to go for a similar humorous vibe, but in the end it didn't feel like a good fit to have magic out in the open, so I made it a standalone setting. That said, I do think it would be great fun to run a crossover with R'lyehwatch!

Fractured Frontiers (One-Page RPG Jam 2026)

The first One-Page RPG Jam took place in 2020, and my submission (The Fools Who Follow) was also the first one-page RPG I ever created. I've taken part every year since then, publishing Guardians of the Shadow Frontier in 2021, Interstellar Explorers in 2022, Arcane Agents in 2023, Troll Couriers of the Sky Isles in 2024, and The Wyrms That Turned in 2025.

This year's jam theme was "fractured", so I decided to go with a post-apocalyptic scenario, as it's not a genre I've done before.  I've created one-pagers that take place during an apocalypse (Deep Trouble in Oldport Bay, Eldritch Apocalypse, and Rotten Odds), but none that take place years later.

My submission is called Fractured Frontiers!

I couldn't decide what sort of post-apocalyptic scenario to go for, so I ended up adding a random table for it, drawing inspiration from The Day of the Triffids, War of the Worlds, Priest, I Am Legend, Daybreakers, The Strain, Terminator (but set in the future), World War Z, and more.

Runespire Academy (Tricube Tales one-page RPG and mini-campaign guide)

I've sometimes heard people say the Tricube Tales one-page RPGs aren't suitable for campaigns, so I decided to show how I'd do exactly that. As well as the "one-page RPG" itself (i.e., the first page) and the adventure examples (which I always include on a second page), my latest product also comes with a 2-page campaign guide, and a 2-page adventure guide: Runespire Academy!

This one changes the traits and replaces the concepts with classes (each player picks three classes to study at the academy). Quirks were replaced with aspects (each player picks two), and perks were replaced with affinities (each player has an affinity for each aspect, and a specialty for each affinity). Karma was replaced with mana, and each aspect has its own separate mana pool. This is less fiddly than it sounds, and I think it makes the magic system feel a bit more interesting.

The campaign guide provides various downtime activities (like exams, building a coven, and memorable events during the semester), with the actual adventures taking place outside the academy, between semesters. Each trait is tied to a form of advancement (athletic characters are better at sports, brainy characters are better at academics, and charming characters are better at recruiting witches and warlocks into their coven). There are various tables and guidelines for generating random NPC students, as other students play a major role in the campaign, with friends and enemies pulled into the ongoing story.

The adventure guide was something I added a little bit later, after I realized the campaign guide only dedicated a couple of short sentences to the adventure. I considered creating a six-scene scenario, as I've done for some of my other one-pagers, but I felt it would be more useful as a generic template that references the adventure generator, rather than as a one-off adventure.

I also created an online Runespire Academy Student Generator for creating random NPCs, but I thought it would be nice to offer people a curated list as well, so I ended up designing a separate 13-page PDF with 216 students (i.e., a d666 table). I went through and manually adjusted the students to balance their traits, family names, aspects, affinities, hobbies, etc, and I also gave each student a unique first name to avoid potential confusion during play.

Curators of the Time Museum (PocketQuest 2026)

The PocketQuest game jam has been running on DriveThruRPG every year since 2022, and each year I submit a Tricube Tales one-page RPG for it: I published Summer Camp Slayers in 2022, Paths Between the Stars in 2023, Conniving Cat Burglars in 2024, and Wicked Dreams in 2025.

This year, the theme of the game jam was "time travel". I initially considered going with a "time thieves" concept, where the characters were time travelers who pulled off heists. But then I started thinking, what if they're curators for a "Time Museum", and their job is to go back in time and "acquire" treasures that would otherwise be lost to history? Their goal would be to avoid disrupting the timeline as much as possible, so they can't simply steal things; instead, they have to wait until the moment those things go missing.

And so my submission for 2026, which went live earlier this month, is Curators of the Time Museum!

It was difficult to find suitable artwork for this one, so I actually ended up using a stock art pack by Anqi "Annie" Shi that was created and offered specifically for the PocketQuest 2026 game jam.

This one was a struggle to finish, if I'm honest. The "time travel" theme initially seemed easy, but I had difficulty coming up with a concept I was happy with. Sometimes I hit writer's block with a one-pager, and I'll let it stew for a while and come back to it later, but game jam submissions have a deadline, and I had to push myself to reach it. I think it turned out nicely in the end, though!

Updates to Tricube Tales and Tricube Tactics

There's been a lot of feedback and questions about Tricube Tales and Tricube Tactics since I first published them, and I've collected all the comments with the intent of eventually updating the books. With the DriveThruRPG print prices going up again in February (and this time, I needed to raise my prices as well), I thought it would be a good time to update both books.

Note that Tricube Tactics has been updated digitally, but I'm still waiting for the print proof before I enable the print-on-demand version (there were a few issues with the first proof, but I've already placed another order, so it should go live in a couple of weeks).

Tricube Tales

The Tricube Tales rules have not changed, so you can still use the old books. However, I wanted to clarify a few things, particularly sections that have caused confusion over the years. I also improved the color saturation on the cover and made a few other cosmetic improvements.

• Changed the color of the headings to blue/purple to match the cover (in the same way that Tricube Tactics has red headings).
• Changed the dice symbols from outline to filled versions (easier to read, and consistent with other products)
• General proofreading and minor grammar and punctuation corrections.
• Cover: Added the text "Core Rulebook" underneath the illustration.
• Page 2: Set the version to 5, updated the copyright date, and updated the credits to use Rick Hershey's new art company name.
• Page 3: Removed the blank line under "Contents" and added "Examples" under "Characters".
• Page 4: Changed "Drive Thru RPG" to "DriveThruRPG", and for layout reasons changed "promoted" to "introduced".
• Page 7: Changed "narrate the outcome" to "narrate the story and NPC actions"
• Page 8: Rephrased the example to use the term "challenge", to use "easy" and "standard" for difficulties, to clarify that you lose a die when the challenge falls outside the scope of your concept, and make it clear that using a magic-themed perk doesn't change the trait.
• Page 20: Rephrased the "Challenges" section to clarify a few points of confusion.
• Page 21-24: Rephrased to include a specific section on Exceptional Success. Also rephrased "Afflictions" to make it more concise, and "Recovery" to clarify what causes permanent afflictions.
• Page 26: Rephrased "Resolution" to clarify that during combat, players only lose resolve on a failed defense roll.
• Page 28: The "Archetypes" section now explicitly references page numbers and the "Combat Styles" section.
• Page 29: The "Combat Styles" section clarifies that combat styles apply to both attacking and defending.
• Page 31: Very slight rephrasing of the "Perks" section on page 31.
• Page 32-33: Rephrased "A Deeper Look" and clarified that spending karma to automatically bypass a challenge also applies if the challenge uses effort tokens, also changed the example perk on page 33 to better fit the described usage.
• Page 34: Rephrased "Another Perspective" to clarify that it doesn't cost karma if you're only using a perk to flavor the narrative.
• Page 35: Rephrased "Stacking Perks" to clarify that it doesn't let you lower the difficulty more than once.
• Page 36: The "Quirks" now clarifies that you can't use both a quirk and an affliction for the same roll.
• Page 54: Corrected typo "Manueverable vehicle" to "Maneuverable vehicle"

Tricube Tactics

The combat supplement has mostly undergone clarifications as well, although one new addition is ballistic armor, which is treated as light cover against firearms (technically, it's always been up to the GM to decide if something is "light cover", so this isn't exactly a new rule, but more of an official interpretation of an existing mechanic).

There is a change in terminology, though: "threat range" is now called "melee reach". You use the ranged combat style to make ranged attacks with ranged weapons against opponents at short, medium, or long range -- and you use the melee combat style to make melee attacks with melee weapons against opponents within your threat range melee reach. It feels more consistent now.

Other than that, the changes were mostly just minor tweaks and/or clarifications of how things already worked (or were supposed to work).

• Tablet PDF had a low-resolution cover image, fixed. Also changed the layers to be consistent with Tricube Tales.
• General proofreading and minor grammar, punctuation, and alignment corrections
• Replaced all instances of "threat range" with "melee reach" (pages 25, 52, 55, 56, 58, 63, 65, 75, 78, 95, 98, 99, 100, 103, 113)
• Replace two references to NPCs losing resolve with NPCs losing effort (pages 38 and 73)
• Page 2: Update the copyright notice and version number, added a mention of the Discord server, and changed "Legalese" to a minor heading to be consistent with Tricube Tales
• Page 12-14 and 18: Sorted subtraits and substyles into alphabetical order.
• Page 14: Where it says "This trait is split into the following" for Melee, Ranged, and Mental, replaced "trait" with "style"
• Page 16: Added a "(see page 92)" to the end of the "Buffs & Summonings" section.
• Page 30: Rephrased "Aim" to clarify that it also applies to mental attacks and resist, not just ranged attacks and evade.
• Page 32: Rephrased "stand" to clarify that it's a swift action if you're unarmored and NOT encumbered. Rephrased "Recover" so that you can perform it outside your turn if a knack lets you recover as a swift action. Rephrased "Retreat" to make space for the rephrased recover.
• Page 37: Rephrased the page to add a section about ballistic armor.
• Page 41: Clarified that you can attack foes in the same zone without engaging them in close combat, if your melee reach exceeds theirs.
• Page 44: Clarified that you can attack foes in the immediate range band without engaging them in close combat, if your melee reach exceeds theirs.
• Page 51: Rephrased the "Attack Range" section to clarify that small ranged weapons lose their short range bonus when used within the target's melee reach. The "Attack Range" subsection is now called "Reach Versus Range".
• Page 56: Updated "Short range" to clarify that it doesn't apply when within your target's melee reach; rephrased "Vulnerable" to make space for the extra wording.
• Page 57: Removed the vague comment about thin obstacles and added "Ballistic armor offers the wearer light cover against firearms (see page 67)." and "Anyone engaged in close combat who isn’t “vulnerable” has at least light cover."
• Page 61: Mentioned that you can stand as a swift action if unarmored and NOT encumbered
• Page 62: removed extraneous space at the beginning of the last line of the first paragraph
• Page 67: Updated the "firearms" section to mention that ballistic armor is treated as light cover against firearms.
• Page 68: Made "collateral damage" bold for emphasis, making it easier to spot at a glance.
• Page 69: Rephrased incendiary weapons, they now cause collateral damage on a roll of 5 or less (instead of always).
• Page 72: In the last sentence, replaced "reduce the challenge difficulty" with "adjust the challenge difficulty", as you will either reduce or increase the difficulty depending on whether the NPC is attacking or defending.
• Page 77-79: Rearranged the minions section, and added a "Fallen Leaders" section, describing how players can continue using their minions if their PC is killed or incapacitated. Rephrased the first paragraph of "Melee Reach" within the "Minions" section, as the wording was a bit awkward with the new "melee reach" terminology.
• Page 78: Clarify that if you use the retreat action, then your minions also use retreat
• Page 82: Rephrased the first paragraph of "Instant Death" to make it clearer that the roll is for the affliction you just received
• Page 86: Replaced reference to "melee combat" with "close combat" (I used to mix these two terms up during early drafts, and it looks like I missed one when I finally settled on close combat).
• Page 104: Added an example showing that a monster's perception is treated as the difficulty for stealth challenges

Putrid Politicians (Tricube Tales)

I've been a little slow on the Tricube Tales micro-settings recently, as I'm spending most of my free time updating the core Tricube Tales rulebook and the Tricube Tactics supplement to incorporate feedback and errata I've collected over the last few years. However, I did manage to release a new one-pager last month.

I've published several Tricube Tales scenarios in the past where you play as the villains, ranging from goblin mafia and evil henchmen to insane cultists and otherworldly horrors. But this time, I wanted to take things a step further and explore the worst of the worst, the most vile and self-serving villains of all. So in this Tricube Tales one-page RPG, you play as...Putrid Politicians!

I decided to go with a suitably nasty color scheme of bubblegum pink and vomit green, which also required some tweaking to the stock art illustration. The man in the illustration has an egg in one hand, which I originally planned to reference in an adventure example with a nod to "The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs" (but I kind of forgot).

However, the example adventures do include a reference to the One-Eyed Warrior, who is a human deity from Saga of the Goblin Horde, and the humorous fantasy theme would definitely lend itself toward a crossover with that setting.

Two Savage Worlds luck-themed house rules: Lucky Break and Karmic Balance

I've had Savage Worlds on the mind lately, after watching a few YouTube videos about it, and I'm struggling to finish my latest micro-setting for Fast! Furious! Fun! February! So I thought I'd take the time to describe a couple of house rule ideas in a blog post as my #FFFFebruary2026 backup plan.

The theme of this year's Fast! Furious! Fun! February! creator jam is "Can you hear me now?" (give a voice to the disenfranchised), so these two new rules are designed to help players who feel they are suffering at the hands of fate (and bad dice rolls), giving them more control over their luck, both good and bad!

Those familiar with my other projects may recognize my source of inspiration, but I feel the same ideas would also work really well in Savage Worlds.

Lucky Break

Players can spend a Benny to add 1 to the final total of any Trait roll. They make this decision after rolling the dice and calculating the total (meaning the player doesn't need to spend the Benny unless they know it will make a difference). No more than 1 Benny can be spent this way for each Trait roll, and the bonus must be applied after any rerolls.

If the player doesn't have any Bennies, or isn't willing to spend them, they may instead ask the GM to introduce a complication to the scene. This is always at the GM's discretion, but player input and creative suggestions should be encouraged, and the complication should drive the story forward in an interesting way.

Goal

This rule lets players nudge the roll a little, so if they nearly succeeded, they can turn their failure into a "success at cost" or "success with a complication". It can also turn a normal success into a raise.

This also helps counter the probability glitch introduced by exploding dice without needing to change any of the core mechanics (which was a downside of the fudge dice solution I've proposed in the past). For example:

• Rolling d4-2: A 18.75% chance of success now increases to 25% when spending a Benny (or accepting a complication) for a +1 bonus.
• Rolling d6-2: A 16.67% chance of success now increases to 33.33% when spending a Benny (or accepting a complication) for a +1 bonus.

While the base roll still suffers from the glitch (i.e., d4-2 is more likely to succeed than d6-2), applying +1 to the total pushes d6-2 way ahead of d4-2 -- and even if the player has run out of Bennies, they can always ask for a complication.

Karmic Balance

If a player has 1 or fewer Bennies remaining, and one of their Minor Hindrances gives them a penalty to the Trait roll, they receive a Benny. Major Hindrance work the same, except they apply when the player has 2 or fewer Bennies. If multiple Hindrances apply to the same roll, the player still only receives 1 Benny.

If none of the player's Hindrances give a penalty to the Trait roll, but the player can narratively justify why one might hinder them in this situation, they may opt to apply either a -2 penalty (for a Minor Hindrance) or a -4 penalty (for a Major Hindrance) to their Trait roll. This allows them to gain a Benny as described in the previous paragraph.

Goal

This rule gives players a way to recover Bennies during play without relying on the GM, but only when they're running low (so it won't let them build a huge pile of Bennies). It also differentiates between Minor and Major Hindrances.

#FFFFebruary2026 logo by Chuhan
https://www.fiverr.com/chuhan14

Random musings: The Unicube RPG System

On my Discord server, the user Devourerofworlds expressed an interest in having a system even simpler than Tricube Tales, with the caveat that it should still be compatible with the micro-settings.

After a good five minutes of thought, here's my proposal: The Unicube system!

Each player selects a concept, a perk, and a quirk from those listed in the micro-setting. There are no traits, karma, or resolve, so ignore that part.

The GM assigns challenges a difficulty of 3 (easy), 4 (standard), or 5 (hard), taking into account the player's concept as well as any other factors. The player must equal or exceed the difficulty with a single d6 roll.

Players may use their perk once per session to retroactively lower the difficulty of the roll by 1. They may use their quirk once per session to increase the difficulty by 1 before rolling; this recharges their perk, allowing them to use their perk a second time in the current session.

That's it. Wounds and death are handled through the narrative, as and when situationally appropriate.

Tricube Tales sales figures for 2025

As has become my yearly tradition, I'd like to share the Tricube Tales sales figures for 2025. You can also view the figures for previous years here if you're interested: 2019/2020/2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Total Sales per Month

Here are the total number of unit sales for the entire product line this year:

• Jan 2025: 1744 sales
• Feb 2025: 1247 sales
• Mar 2025: 1441 sales
• Apr 2025: 979 sales
• May 2025: 1292 sales
• Jun 2025: 1285 sales
• Jul 2025: 1562 sales
• Aug 2025: 1246 sales
• Sep 2025: 1417 sales
• Oct 2025: 912 sales
• Nov 2025: 960 sales
• Dec 2025: 1336 sales

Breakdown by Product

Here is a breakdown of the total sales figures for the main products:

• Tricube Tales: 3364 sales (inc. 774 print copies) since 2019-11-08
• Solo Rules & Deck: 2116 sales (311 printed decks) since 2021-05-14
• Tricube Tactics: 776 sales (183 print copies) since 2024-11-08

And here are their associated print-only products:

• Tricube Tales Micro Edition: 70 print sales since 2023-05-20
• Tricube Tales Solo Rules: 113 print sales since 2023-03-07
• Tricube Tactics Rules Primer: 23 print sales since 2024-12-12

These are the "payment optional" one-pagers on DTRPG (in order of publication) -- people can download them for free, but I'm only tracking actual sales where people paid for them:

• Goblin Gangsters: 1289 sales since 2020-08-27
• Samhain Slaughter: 1326 sales since 2020-10-08
• Chrome Shells & Neon Streets: 1467 sales since 2020-11-21
• Metahuman Uprising: 1385 sales since 2020-12-28
• Rotten Odds: 1314 sales since 2021-01-31
• Tales of the Goblin Horde: 1308 sales since 2021-04-01
• Wardens of the Weird West: 1368 sales since 2021-06-12
• Firefighters: 1282 sales since 2021-07-06
• Horrible Henchmen: 1268 sales since 2021-08-13
• Pirates of the Bone Blade: 1339 sales since 2021-09-15
• Eldritch Detectives: 1428 sales since 2021-10-30
• Wiseguys: Gangster Tales: 1224 sales since 2021-11-20
• Interstellar Mech War: 1352 sales since 2021-11-30
• Voyage to the Isle of Skulls: 1226 sales since 2021-12-31
• Down in the Depths: 1130 sales since 2022-01-24
• Accursed: Dark Tales of Morden: 697 sales since 2022-02-17
• Twisted Wishes: 1128 sales since 2022-02-23
• A Welsh Werewolf in Llanfair PG: 1186 sales since 2022-04-01
• Interstellar Smugglers: 1286 sales since 2022-05-04
• Winter Eternal: Darkness and Ice: 1037 sales since 2022-05-17
• Sharp Knives & Dark Streets: 1183 sales since 2022-05-31
• Summer Camp Slayers: 1109 sales since 2022-06-28
• Titan Effect RPG: Covert Tales: 1081 sales since 2022-07-20
• Sundered Chains: 1021 sales since 2022-08-07
• Stranger Tales: 1060 sales since 2022-10-06
• Minerunners: 1003 sales since 2022-11-01
• Spellrunners: 1060 sales since 2022-11-22
• Christmas Capers: 986 sales since 2022-12-18
• Heroes of Sherwood Forest: 967 sales since 2023-01-28
• Tales of the Little Adventurers: 905 sales since 2023-02-19
• Tales of the City Guard: 918 sales since 2023-03-26
• Maidenstead Mysteries: 880 sales since 2023-04-19
• Interstellar Rebels: 924 sales since 2023-05-04
• Hunters of Victorian London: 858 sales since 2023-05-29
• Stone Age Hunters: 811 sales since 2023-06-23
• Paths Between the Stars: 832 sales since 2023-07-01
• Mythical Heroes: 776 sales since 2023-09-15
• Academy of Monstrous Secrets: 722 sales since 2023-10-29
• Eldritch Apocalypse: 735 sales since 2023-12-07
• Champions of Osiris: 644 sales since 2024-01-27
• Conniving Cat Burglars: 709 sales since 2024-04-01
• Tales of the Sewer Samurai: 601 sales since 2024
• Champions of Fenrir: 548 sales since 2024-07-01
• Ghost Banishers: 515 sales since 2024-10-10
• Vermilium: Tales of the Wildwood: 370 sales since 2025-01-30
• Eldritch Cultists: 338 sales since 2025-02-13
• Metal Gods of the Apocalypse: 289 sales since 2025-02-26
• Tomb Guardians: 290 sales since 2025-03-20
• Rabbit Tales: 261 sales since 2025-04-11
• Sylvan Sentinels: 210 sales since 2025-06-17
• Wicked Dreams: 254 sales since 2025-06-22
• Specters of Locksworth: 180 sales since 2025-06-26
• Road Hogs: 159 sales since 2025-07-27
• Arcane Resurrection: 98 sales since 2025-10-11
• Starbreaker: Tales From the Rim: 65 sales since 2025-12-02

These are the DTRPG freebies (in order of publication). A few free products help build up my mailing list. However, since I've added a print-on-demand option, they now have a few sales as well:

• Interstellar Bounty Hunters: 5339 downloads (41 print sales) since 2020-09-29
• Welcome to Drakonheim: 3671 downloads (29 print sales) since 2021-03-10
• Interstellar Troopers: 4734 downloads (39 print sales) since 2021-04-26
• Interstellar Laser Knights: 4395 downloads (37 print sales) since 2021-05-04

I also have a few freebies on Itch, which I entered into Jams. Here they are, once again listed in order of publication -- and these now have some print-on-demand sales as well:

• The Fools Who Follow: 1284 downloads since 2020-07-29
• Deep Trouble in Oldport Bay: 854 downloads since 2021-02-20
• Halfling Hustlers: 428 downloads since 2021-07-03
• Guardians of the Shadow Frontier: 1200 downloads since 2021-07-31
• Interstellar Explorers: 838 downloads since 2022-08-02
• Arcane Agents: 404 downloads since 2023-08-15
• Troll Couriers of the Sky Isles: 552 downloads since 2024-08-01
• The Wyrms That Turned: 160 downloads since 2025-08-17

Sales for the printed versions of the character cards have continued to be very slow:

• Minerunners (cards): 22 print sales since 2023-03-07
• Sharp Knives & Dark Streets (cards): 26 print sales since 2023-03-07
• Spellrunners (cards): 24 print sales since 2023-03-07
• Christmas Capers (cards): 13 print sales since 2024-12-12
• Eldritch Apocalypse (cards): 17 print sales since 2024-12-12
• Interstellar Rebels (cards): 14 print sales since 2024-12-12

I'd like to offer print versions of some of the Tricube Tactics character cards as well, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. While the cards don't sell very well, I love being able to hand them out when running games.

Some Thoughts

The overall sales figures continue to climb, with new releases driving sales to the older ones. Last year, 13 of the one-pagers had reached Platinum Best Seller (1001+ sales). This year, that number has doubled, with 26 one-pagers reaching Platinum Best Seller (although they're still years away from the 2501 needed for Mithral).

Accursed: Dark Tales of Morden would very likely have reached Platinum Best Seller as well by now, but it's one of the collaborative one-pagers I published through someone else, and they've had the entire setting line set to "private" for over a year now, which is a big shame. This loss of control over the fate of my work is definitely a risk when collaborating with other publishers (it's a similar situation to selling through most Community Content Programs, I guess, although at least in this situation, I still retain the rights to my work, and I could, in theory, file the serial numbers off and republish it myself).

In terms of genre popularity, the five top sellers are the same as last year: Chrome Shells & Neon Streets (cyberpunk) maintains the top spot with 1467 sales, followed by Eldritch Detectives (supernatural horror) with 1428 sales, Metahuman Uprising (superheroes) with 1385 sales, Wardens of the Weird West (weird western) with 1368 sales, and Interstellar Mech War (science fiction) with 1352 sales.

I often see people comparing DriveThruRPG with Itch, and I think it's quite interesting to use the one-pagers for such comparisons, as they're the same style of product. I've observed before that I get far more free downloads on DriveThruRPG than I do on Itch, but comparing the two again now, it even looks like I get more purchases on DriveThruRPG than I get free downloads on Itch!

That said, DriveThruRPG is far more selective when running site-wide sales these days, and they rarely include any of my products (due to my low prices). They've also raised the threshold for Deal of the Day to around $5, which means that despite having enough PPP to run a couple of Deals of the Day, I don't have any products expensive enough to submit. This is something I will need to address in the future, because I'm losing out on a lot of the promotional tools I used in the past.

In December last year, The Dungeon Dive posted a video about Tricube Tales, and the sales that month skyrocketed to the point where I was able to reach the requirements for a new "Tricube Tales" Game System filter on DriveThruRPG. This was a milestone I'd been working toward for a while, so I was very excited to finally reach it.

Tricube Tactics hasn't proven overly popular, but it was really designed to fill a need (offering a solution to those who wanted deeper combat and/or more mechanical support for character advancement in their Tricube Tales games), and I think it's succeeded. It was never intended to replace the base system, just broaden the target audience, and provide me the tools I needed for some of my own future projects (like converting the Saga of the Goblin Horde setting, which is still on my TODO list).

However, three of the one-pagers have also offered tie-in adventures using Tricube Tactics. The first (and main one) is Tomb Guardians, which comes with a 2-page adventure specifically designed for Tricube Tactics and a 12-page example playthrough showing how to run such a game. The other two are Sylvan Sentinels and Arcane Resurrection, both of which include adventures that can be run either with or without Tricube Tactics. All three micro-settings include Tricube Tactics character cards (although these can still be run with just Tricube Tales, by ignoring the knacks, minions, etc). The Tomb Guardians character cards even include gameplay advice on the back for each character.

What's Next?

I've not made much progress on my major projects this year. I've expanded my notes for Saga of the Goblin Horde, Tricube Terrors, and Tricube Toolbox (formerly known as Tricube Tricks), but I need to push myself to take at least one of them to the next step.

I'm also thinking of updating Tricube Tales and Tricube Tactics with some minor errata (no rule changes, just some slight adjustments to clarify certain things). I don't generally like updating products once people have bought them in print, but I think as long as I don't change any rules, it's probably not too bad.

I'm also toying with the idea of expanding two of the one-pagers (Goblin Gangsters and Tales of the Goblin Horde). I generally try to avoid doing this, but with my plans to convert Saga of the Goblin Horde (and perhaps The Gobfather) to Tricube Tales, I think it would be beneficial to have promotional one-pagers that include adventures to help promote those settings.

Of course, I'll also continue releasing new one-pagers! There's the expanded traditional fantasy micro-setting I discussed recently, but I've also been putting together some ideas for an ETU/Buffy-inspired one-pager for a while, and that's something I'd like to publish in 2026.

I ran three Tricube Tales games for my local TTRPG community earlier this year, which was a fun experience. I've also run a few online games for various people. I don't do this for marketing purposes, but because I enjoy it! However, I'd like to run some more this year, particularly using Tricube Tactics.

Musings on an expanded Tricube Tales fantasy scenario

Something I've wanted to create for a long time is a fairly traditional fantasy scenario with adventurers roaming the land, taking on various jobs. Of course, there are already several fantasy one-pagers for Tricube Tales, but their settings are all rather quirky, and I'd like something more vanilla.

Having recently been playing a lot of The Witcher 3, I've got a good feel for the sort of jobs the heroes might take on (and honestly, it's not that different from various novels I've read or TV shows I've watched, where people post jobs on notice boards and members of the "adventurers guild" complete them for rewards).

However, I really want this to be an expanded product, with three Six-Scene Scenarios (one set in a town, one in the wilderness, and one in a dungeon).

I had originally planned to split it into a trilogy of three separate one-page RPGs, one for urban adventures, one for wilderness, and one for dungeons, meaning each would come with its own Six-Scene Scenario. They could even be combined into a single product (like I did for Champions of Fenrir and Champions of Osiris), or released as separate products in the same series (like I did for Eldritch Detectives, Eldritch Apocalypse, and Eldritch Cultists -- or Twisted Wishes, Sundered Chains, and Wicked Dreams). But unlike those other settings, these fantasy adventures all follow the same characters in the same time and place, so I worry that it would feel very repetitive to offer them as three one-pagers.

The second option would be to adjust the layout and add another adventure generator table on the right-hand side, like this:

The problem is there's not enough space for three tables, so I'd need to combine the wilderness and dungeon adventures, which isn't really ideal when they have separate Six-Scene Scenarios. It also means there would be two pages of adventure examples, so I'd be left with a blank page I'd have to use for something else.

The third option would be to have a standard adventure generator for urban adventures, then offer two alternative location tables for dungeon and wilderness adventures, like this:

The GM would then roll 3d6 for the adventure as normal, but they could pick one of the three location tables depending on where they want the adventure to take place. There would then be three pages of example adventures, meaning the one-page RPG and its adventure examples would fit onto two double-sided sheets of paper.

Of course, each page would share the same objective and complication tables, and although I could offer different examples for each, the table entries would still need to be phrased fairly generically in order to fit all three location types. Making them too generic risks stripping the table of flavor.

But the more I think about it, the less comfortable I am with the idea of having an entire double-sided sheet of paper with just adventure examples on both sides. I like having the entire game and all the adventure examples on a single sheet of paper; it keeps the product concise, and if you're running a one-shot, you don't really need too many examples anyway. Even if you want to run more adventures, the examples are supposed to be for inspiration; they're not intended to cover every possible situation.

That brings me on to the fourth option, which is to design a simple one-page RPG in the same style as all the others, with a regular adventure generator that includes a mixture of urban, wilderness, and dungeon locations. There would still be three Six-Scene Scenarios covering urban, wilderness, and dungeon adventures, and I could also offer another sheet with an example town (much like I did for Sharp Knives & Dark Streets), which would include a map and expanded locations in and around the town.

After all this, I think I'm favoring the fourth option. As much as I'd like to expand the one-pager format and experiment with different setups, I still want the core product to fit onto a single sheet of paper (otherwise I'd be better off turning it into a book). The first page is really the "one-page RPG", as it contains everything needed to play, and the second page (i.e., the back of the sheet) includes examples for each entry in the adventure generator table.

Starbreaker: Tales From the Rim (Tricube Tales)

The latest Tricube Tales one-page RPG is another collaborative effort, this time with Brandon Verhalen of Star Anvil Studios. Starbreaker: Tales From the Rim is a Tricube Tales adaptation of Starbreaker-SAINTs and Synners Core, a setting that Brandon originally wrote for Savage Worlds.

This was quite a tough one to adapt, due to the large amount of content in the setting book. Starbreaker offers a large number of playable species, and I couldn't fit them all into the smaller format, let alone give them full descriptions, so I went for a very concise approach and included just seven species (including human) with two or three descriptive words for each.

Much like Vermilium: Tales of the Wildwood, which focused on a specific region of the world, I decided to focus on a specific planet, so the entire scenario takes place on the mining world of Echo. Even then, there are a lot of regions described in the book that I couldn't cover, so I decided to use the example locations on the second page to flesh out six major places.

There are also many enemy factions in Starbreaker, and I tried to tie several of them into the adventure examples on the second page, using both the mission objectives and the complications to reference different organizations the players might deal with.

Overall, I'm happy with the way it turned out. Even though the reader would benefit greatly from owning the full setting, the one-pager provides enough information for someone to run a few quick games.

Arcane Resurrection (Tricube Tales & Tactics)

I've recently been reading a lot of fantasy novels about a "displaced protagonist" who finds themselves sent to the past, the future, or another world entirely (i.e., Isekai). Sometimes they do this intentionally (going back in time to prevent a cataclysm), other times it's an accident. Often, they end up possessing and reviving a recently deceased host, usually that of a young noble.

The series I've read include: Magus Reborn, Rift Magus Reborn, Legend of the Arch Magus, Return's Defiance, Towers of Heaven, Spell Breaker, Dead Tired, Revenge of the Sorcerer King, Chronicles of Empyrea, The Alchemist, The Last Paladin, and System Universe. Note: This blog post isn't a book recommendation, as not all of the books were to my taste, but what I did like was the premise, and that's what inspired me to write my latest Tricube Tales & Tactics micro-setting: Arcane Resurrection.

I went with the "go back in time" premise (like Magus Reborn, Returner's Defiance, and Towers of Heaven) because I liked the way it gave the protagonist a clear overarching goal (to save the world from a major threat). I also decided to go with "possessing the body of a recently murdered young noble" (like Magus Reborn, Rift Magus Reborn, and Legend of the Arch Magus) as this immediately throws the players into the thick of things, forcing them to deal with a prominent individual's rivals, debts, and enemies.

I've found that scenarios with clear objectives tend to be the easiest to run, and I feel that Arcane Resurrection has some pretty solid goals for the players. I also included a Six-Scene Scenario with guidelines for running it with Tricube Tactics, and tied the adventure to the main plot, giving the players further leads to follow.

The Wyrms That Turned (Tricube Tales)

Last month, I submitted my entry for the One-Page RPG Jam 2025: The Wyrms That Turned (for those who aren't familiar with it, the name is a reference to the expression "Even a worm will turn").

I've fancied making a dragon-themed one-pager for a while, and I even mentioned it back in December as one of the themes I wanted to cover this year. When I saw that the theme of this year's game jam was "growth", I immediately thought of dragons growing with age, so I decided to make this one-pager a bit different by incorporating advancement rules (this also allowed me to show how combat encounters can scale as the PCs become more powerful).

I customized the trait descriptions to mention claws, bite, and breath weapons, and (much like Conniving Cat Burglars) I replaced "concept" with "breed". I also replaced "perk" with "affinity", and I drew inspiration from Savage Dragons for the quirks.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this one-pager, and I was particularly proud of the terrible pun for the final adventure example -- "Happy Medium", where the dragons have to reach a mutually-beneficial compromise with a necromancer ;)

Road Hogs (Tricube Tales)

Last month's Tricube Tales one-pager was Road Hogs. This one was actually inspired by the artwork -- I knew I wanted to turn it into a micro-setting the moment I saw it! It was one of the pieces I received through Rick Hershey's stock art Patreon.

However, it did take me a while to decide how to approach it. I eventually decided to set Road Hogs in the same world as Goblin Gangsters, because I liked the potential for crossovers. I drew inspiration from TV shows such as Renegade, The A-Team, and even Reacher. Specifically, I liked the idea of flawed heroes wandering from town to town, fixing a problem or solving a mystery before moving on again. As Goblin Gangsters is a humorous setting, I tried to keep the same vibe with Road Hogs.

As usual, there are also a few nods to whatever I've recently been reading or watching on TV (in this case, The Dead Don't Die).

I even added a little town generator to this one, as I wanted to emphasize the idea of the characters moving around a lot.

In terms of trade dress, I decided to add a tire track across the page, in the same way that Conniving Cat Burglars has little paw prints. I'm not sure if anyone else really notices those little details, I still enjoy adding them!

Savage Worlds: The removal of Charisma in SWADE isn't a big deal

Whenever people talk about the changes between SWADE and SWD, there always seems to be someone who describes the removal of Charisma as being one of the main differences. I don't agree.

There are hundreds (if not thousands) of sweeping changes between SWD and SWADE, and some of them are massive rewritings that can fundamentally change the way the game is played. But the removal of Charisma? That's nothing more than a syntax change, and it has absolutely no impact on the game.

In SWD, Charisma was simply a modifier that applied to Persuasion and Streetwise rolls. That's it. For example, Attractive gave you +2 Charisma, but it could just as easily have been written as "+2 to Persuasion and Streetwise", and it would have been functionally identical. I'm guessing "Charisma" was included to make the game easier to grok for players from certain other RPGs, and it made it a little easier to track on your character sheet if you stacked up a lot of Charisma modifiers. But generally, it was an unnecessary extra step, and I would have preferred to see it removed in earlier editions as well.

In SWADE, Streetwise was effectively merged into Persuasion (the mechanics from the old Streetwise skill became the Networking rule, which primarily uses Persuasion, although you can use Intimidation instead now -- note that there is also a Streetwise Edge in SWADE, but mechanically that's more like half the old SWD Investigator Edge, which was split into two for SWADE).

That means if SWADE had kept Charisma, it would have just been a modifier to Persuasion. So Attractive would have given a bonus to Charisma, and Charisma would have given a bonus to Persuasion. At that point, it becomes obvious how superfluous it is, and I imagine that's why they decided to remove it (and perhaps also the fact that there are now fewer Edges and Hindrances with generic Persuasion modifiers that you can stack).

But in my opinion, in terms of describing the changes between SWADE and SWD, the removal of Charisma is barely worth mentioning, and only really of historical interest to someone who picks up an older character sheet.

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.