Dead of Winter (Tricube Tales & Tactics)

This month I finally finished my latest horror-themed one-page RPG, which draws inspiration from movies such as 30 Days of Night, The Thing, and The Mist, and it comes with an adventure guide that can be used with (or without) Tricube Tactics: Dead of Winter!

I started working on this one back in June, but I kept going back and forth on the specifics. It also didn't help that I somehow managed to mix up Alaska and Antarctica while writing it (I think I got confused while researching locations because The Thing was filmed in Alaska but was set in Antarctica). I had originally envisioned setting the scenario in northern Alaska (similar to Barrow in 30 Days of Night), but I wanted somewhere with trees for the monsters to hide in, so I eventually ended up setting it in Valdez.

I also got stuck for a long time on the adventure guide; it was initially going to be an example adventure, but as the one-pager uses an incident generator (similar to the Welsh Werewolf one-pager) rather than an adventure generator, I ended up doing something similar to the guide I wrote for Runespire Academy.

The cover for this product is also a good example of how I sometimes photobash images together using stock art. The illustrations came from Rick Hershey's Publisher's Choice Stock Art Patreon, which is a great way for indie publishers like me to build a large collection of good-quality, inexpensive stock art (and better still, he allows his artwork to be modified). Rick has a different theme every month, and December last year had the theme "Winter Noir", which is where most of the images in Dead of Winter came from.

I took five individual pieces of stock art:

I then combined the illustrations (and modified the background image) to create the product cover:

The characters on the cover (along with the background) were also used for two of the character cards:

Each of my one-pagers has one or two illustrations, and several come with illustrated character cards. That wouldn't be financially feasible for me with commissioned artwork.

The background textures for the pages come from Figu Design; I've bought loads of her Template Packs from DTRPG, and I just pick one (or combine a few) to fit each new one-pager's theme. The character card backgrounds are also based on Figu's covers, although I have to modify those quite a bit, as they're designed for book covers.

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.