The Premise
The Analysis
And what is "Time Cube", you ask? Oh, only the best excuse I've seen in a mighty damn long while to destroy the human race before some hapless alien race notices we came up with it and destroys us themselves to spare the universe from embarrassment.
More exactly? Time Cube is a seemingly endless schizophrenic fucking spewing by the (self-proclaimed) "Wisest Human" that defies nearly every possible level of logic, purpose, dignity, and everything else crucial to the act of communication and/or the understanding of reality. If you've ever wondered what a -400 Mental Balance in Kult is like, or what overdosing on both crack and acid while carefully scraping out your brain to replace it with flaming shit might do to you, or what's really inside Happy Noodle Boy's mind, the Time Cube website is a useful example.
While Nathan Treves does take a few liberties with Time Cube's central concepts (and really, who can blame him?), TIMECUBE is an excellent and skillful adaptation – not since Call of Cthulhu (another insanity-centered RPG, coincidentally) has a game captured the feel and spirit of its source material so well. In fact, had Nathan not been credited, I would easily have believed that this RPG was written by Time Cube's flaming shit-brained creator himself. It's just that close to the real thing.
With that said, I hope Nathan doesn't take too much offense at TIMECUBE's appearance here (and the vast insult a game's appearance here usually implies). The TIMECUBE RPG was obviously just for laughs, and so is this. Really, I mean to degrade Time Cube's lobotomy-candidate creator far fucking more than Nathan himself.
But, with that said, it's hard to ignore that TIMECUBE – while very humorous – is still based on the literally incoherent raving of a psychotic crackpot and, as such, pure sanity-draining hell for any poor bastards who find themselves playing it. In that light, it easily rates a Middle Finger Evolution entry.
The point/objective/whatever of TIMECUBE, like the website itself, is obscured by attempts at sentence construction that wouldn't have passed muster in a kindergarten language class. The entire character creation passage, for example, reads as such:
Your character is cornered, 4-corner head, 1-corner face, 4-corner life metamorphosis.
While this is, in fact, a sign of TIMECUBE's once again excellent emulation of its whacked source material, it does mean you'll be tempted to visit the Time Cube website in the desperate hope of determining what the hell a 4-corner life metamorphosis is (or, failing that, determining how many hits of acid you'll need to fit inside your bunghole before such understanding will come).
Which I wouldn't recommend. Oh, god, no.
For the brave, foolhardy, drug-influenced, and/or terminally curious, though, once we're at the actual Time Cube website, we are immediately confronted with the following message in 10,000,000-point font (helpfully reduced here so as to not force you to page down 8,000 times to read two sentences):
Ignoring "Time Cube" is Evil.
It is best to be uneducated
and
Wise, than educated with
Lies.
You are an educated stupid
ass.
Word is counterfeit &
fictitous
representations of true
values,
as in form, substance, and
deed.
Adult word god is a
counterfeit
and fictitous evil upon
children.
It goes on and on like that, only getting worse as it goes, and hitting the "end" key (to see if it actually does end) reveals a section with links like "All Clock Faces Are Wrong" and "Same Stupid Ass Teachers" and "Tee Hee! Flaming Shit Me Brain. I Smoke Crack Pipe Through Ass. God Word Refreshing!"
No, wait...that last one was what I said after spending more than three seconds losing SAN points to this crap. I believe Darren MacLennan described Time Cube best: "An endless hideous rant that's written in a language that's indistinguishable from English but which is not English." You'd think that someone who describes himself as the "Wisest Human" and the "Greatest Thinker" would realize that actually mastering the language you're using would make it easier to seem "wise" and "non-ass-like", but that's probably just my educated evil stupid leanings showing.
Miserably, attempting to understand the bullshit of Time Cube is necessary to fully evaluate the TIMECUBE RPG, so I actually had to read through most of this cocksucking tripe. Through some miracle (considering all the other sanity-wracking idiocy I've suffered through my perpetual fascination with horrible RPGs), I was able to withstand the SAN loss for attempting this without going permanently insane, and now I can make some (pun intended) educated guesses about what the "Wisest Human" is getting at.
Since it's theoretically possible you might be forced to play TIMECUBE for some reason –
(What's that? HOW? Well, you might die, and then it might turn out for some ignorant reason that there's a God after all, and He/She/It/They might say to you "Okay, you can either go to hell, or you can play in My TIMECUBE campaign before going to heaven. Choose!" Hey, it's been known to happen.)
– I went ahead and wrote a brief Time Cube guide so that you won't have to torture yourself like I did. Luckily for you, I (unlike Time Cube's ass-monkey creator) happen to have a grasp of such tricky concepts as "communication" and "reality". Thus, I was able to write AND structure the guide in this totally amazing way that will actually PROMOTE understanding. Just read each point in order, and you'll soon understand everything you need to know about Time Cube.
SARTIN'S GUIDE TO THE TIME CUBE
First things first. As you read along these points, you'll realize that understanding the Time Cube depends crucially on acid, pot, hard alcohol, and other mind-altering substances, so you should start taking those NOW and avoid the rush. The Time Cube dude (meaning, the Time Cube website creator and the one behind all this bullshit) is, like, the "Greatest Thinker" and the "Wisest Human". Everyone ELSE has been educated to be evil and stupid. Yes, educated. Teachers are, in fact, the root of all evil, because they're making everyone evil and stupid. For some reason. This is a very important point, because most of the Time Cube website is just repeating over and over (with different wording) how stupid/evil educators are and/or how stupid/evil they've made you. (Never mind that frigging EDUCATION is largely what makes most of the things we enjoy possible, including the fucking INTERNET Mr. Wisest Human has posted his rant on.) Educators enslave everyone and keep them stupid by abusing words. Because all these stupid words you use don't really mean what you think they do, you're kept evil and stupid by not understanding the goddamn Time Cube. (With all this accusing everyone of being evil and stupid, I almost forgot about that.) The Time Cube is something Mr. Wisest Human has discovered that educators refuse to teach (probably on the same grounds that they refuse to teach Creationism or that the Earth is flat or that shoving sharp objects in your rectum is a good idea). I'd explain what the Time Cube actually is, but that would have required Mr. Wisest Human to have explained it himself, as opposed to putting random words together and hoping they make sentences (remember, he believes that words are an evil device of enslavement). If you absolutely HAVE to have SOME explanation of what the Time Cube is, then the closest anyone who is not in desperate need of medication will be able to tell you is that the number 4 is the basic number of the universe. For example, you have four corners, there are actually four days in every day (not one), four years in every year (not one), four corners on every cube (well, eight if you're actually LOOKING at the damn thing, but you're not the Wisest Human, so never mind), the world/universe/whatever has four corners, religion and academia are two of your four corners (despite having been labelled earlier as evil and stupid), et cetera. For some reason, this contradicts, condemns, and is more important than every religious and scientific book ever written. If that last point didn't make too much sense, then (again) increasing your intake of illegal mind-altering substances should set things right. Oh, wait. The "earth sphere" rotates within an invisible Time Cube, so that's a clue. Oh, oops. Your own people will kill you to prevent the Time Cube from becoming known, so be careful.
And so on!
As you can see, the concepts of Time Cube are ingenious and inspiring ideas, with endless applications to your everyday life, and we can only kick Nathan's ass for not bringing us the TIMECUBE RPG sooner.
Of course, mentioning the TIMECUBE RPG brings us full circle (and no corners!), as I now suddenly remember that I'm supposed to be talking about the RPG, not the godawful website. So let's get back to that now.
I've already mentioned character creation, so we'll start there. Sadly, as before, there is little information about what a "4-cornered life metamorphosis" or "4-corner head" is, leaving me unable to determine my character's traits or powers. While this would be a very serious flaw in a sane RPG, remember that here it illustrates Time Cube's peculiar nature and attitude nicely, getting players in the mood for smoking that crack pipe, losing their sanity, and smiting the inevitable hordes of educated stupid evil educators.
Naturally, more daring readers might imagine something like "Hey, wait! Maybe 4-cornered life metamorphosis means my character mutates every Summer, Winter, Fall, and Spring!" or "4-corner head probably means my character has a square cock or four cocks at the end of their penis or something", so I'm going to go ahead and assume that player characters are humans, and can do things that humans normally do. Unfortunately, Nathan didn't include a character sheet, so I wasn't able to see if it had blanks for Drug Susceptibility, Schizophrenia Level, Critical Head Injuries, Blatant Stupidity, and other categories of human activity frequently associated with Time Cube.
The next TIMECUBE section briefly covers what are alleged to be the races of the Time Cube universe, but the last time Purple, Yellow, Green, Blue, Red, and Black were all considered races was when one of my acid-tripping friends was describing his six hour encounter with the Slinky god after smashing all those cities in his bathroom, so it's probably just mislabeled. It also says we can "have chosen to exist on multiple Sides, but experience suffers" – players should try to avoid "chosen" multiple Sides, then, as they will already be experiencing well more than enough suffering as it is.
We are also helpfully informed that "THERE IS NO WHITE IN THE TIMECUBE!!!" Which sucks, as White sounds like part of what I am (which, by now, is Blue/Red/White and a heaving assload of suffering), but never mind. The text further reveals that rules for White will be covered in TIMECUBE's upcoming "Now You Can Choose White, Stupid" sourcebook. While White Wolf detractors may despair from seeing such world-altering metaplot material introduced before they're even out of character creation, remember that this White thing reveals an important truth about the Time Cube: its originator is a hypocrite-ass whose facts change at will.
The character class section's brevity is rivaled only by that earlier character creation section, so we'll quote it directly:
In impure world, there is only one class. The class of being EDUCATED STUPID!!!!!! All characters start out as being equally educated retarded.
Bitching. I, of course, had been hoping for such thrilling classes as Lobotomy Patient or Adult Word God or Wisest Human/Flaming Shit Brain or Humanity-Enslaving Talking Dog or Wrong Clock Facer or (by far the most powerful and knowledgeable class) Glass Dildo Master, but TIMECUBE is obviously an introductory-level RPG for educated stupid people. Thus, Nathan kept things simple by restricting starting characters to the EDUCATED STUPID class, and I totally respect that decision.
Of course, those of you who already have well-worn crack pipes have no doubt already conquered your EDUCATED STUPID status, and wonder excitedly what other classes you're now ready to enter. We can only presume that these will be explained in TIMECUBE sourcebook #2: "Now You Have Lobotomy, Stupid". If you've progressed THAT far in the Time Cube, there's no doubt you'll want one.
Alright, the combat section! At two paragraphs, this is one of TIMECUBE's longest sections, and one I was looking very forward to. After all, I was dying to see how my Blue/Red/White EDUCATED STUPID could use his mighty four-cocked penis and Happy Noodle Boy powers to defy the educated stupid evil educators who have enslaved humanity.
Things started off promisingly when I saw that "Red White or Green characters have double-sided combat winnings". Hey, I'm at least two of those – maybe I have quadruple combat winnings! A most auspicious multiplier, given we're in the Time Cube universe. Then I realized that having quadruple combat winnings will probably make it harder for me to die, which will prolong the time I'll have to endure the Time Cube universe. Logic has screwed me once again, as it always does with Time Cube, and the fact that this game reflects that is yet another sign of the care and effort Nathan has put forth.
Then we get into some crap about your SOCIETY and Life Points, which are never explained, except that you can evidently reduce the Life Points with a d20 (or 4d20, if you're me). I am further despaired by seeing that I will "return to CYCLE OF REINCARNATION" when my Life Points add up to nothing, meaning I will simply be reborn in the Time Cube universe (courtesy of a presumable expulsion through someone's 4-cornered vagina). Avoiding this by vanquishing my enemies, of course, only means "You still exist in the pathetic mortal world!"
This illustrates another important Time Cube truth: you just can't win or get ahead or find a point to it all or anything, no matter how logical or badass you are, so DEFINITELY don't bother thinking about it.
The campaign world section. How I had been dreading this, and how right I was to do so. Nathan's Time Cube emulation has been brilliant in other parts of the TIMECUBE RPG, but nowhere does he shine so brightly as he does in his description of the Time Cube universe. I've really got to hand it to him. At this writing, I've been crack-free for 24 years (exactly 25 if you're some whacked anti-abortionist who wants to count the 9 4-cornered life metamorphosizing months I spent in my mother's 4-cornered womb), but little has ever made me want to take up that first smoke the way this section did.
Except, of course, the Time Cube website proper. The line is so thin here that all Nathan had to do was put his writing in 10,000,000-point font, and I would have held my heart in my hand...after, of course, cutting it out to prevent myself from suffering further.
Naturally, this section doesn't make a lick of sense, and what few almost-coherent sentences there are ("Where the 2 major Time forces join, synergy creates 2 minor new Time points we recognize as Sunup and Sundown") readily contradict reality ("sunup" and "sundown" have been recognized since the dawn of man, so they aren't "new", duh!). I was happy to see the end of it, as the more I read it, the more I succumbed to the overwhelming fear that I'll have to change my class from EDUCATED STUPID to Adult Word God as soon as possible. (My first Adult Word Godly act, of course, will be to smite Time Cube's 4-corner cocksucking creator for being an inconceivable dumbass, and then maybe check on Nathan to see if he's okay.)
TIMECUBE finishes with a section of adventure seeds, bringing bitter despair to those who had hoped this RPG would be too incoherent to even begin to be playable. While many sane RPGs include sample adventures that (in actuality) totally contradict the intended mood and style of the rest of the RPG (and I admit this is a serious and epidemic problem), Nathan bucks the trend by making these adventure seeds – as with all else – immaculately reflect their Time Cube inspiration.
If I have one criticism of this section, it is that many of these adventures – like the disguised mind adventure to the fourth dimension to meet the SIX SIDES OF TIMECUBE, the outlaw bandit daughter who wants to have unclean animal gorilla sex with the player characters' White side, or the one where they end up meeting dead brains in jars – seem far too hard for beginning STUPID EDUCATED characters. The obvious challenges of these quests are more appropriate for the Humanity-Enslaving Talking Dog and Glass Dildo Master classes, or even the hidden, powerful, controversial "4-Corner Cock Cowboy" class.
In conclusion, the TIMECUBE RPG is a fine piece of work that will help keep the gamer elite from sanity for many years to come. So fire up that 4-cornered crack pipe, do your best Happy Noodle Boy impression ("Fuck! I smell blood in your urine! Grrrr! Gimme them martians!"), lose your grasp of the Adult Word Godly English language, and defy the educated stupid evil educators and everyone else by opening your mind to a 3-equator, 4/16 principle life creativity universe! Or just sit in the dark, stroking one of your four cocks. Either way.
Things I Learned From This Game
[Note: culling ridiculous statements from the Time Cube website caused me to fail a SAN roll here, thus resulting in incoherence. Upon recovering, I deleted the 50 or so pages of random keystrokes and new Cthulhu Mythos lore, but I cannot afford to go back and find further things for you to learn. I'd apologize, but it's for your own good, you ungrateful square-cock suckers.]
Things To Watch For
The Ratings
| Badness: | Superb + |
| It's amusing to read, but if you're faced with the prospect of actually playing it, you should suggest a more fun alternative. For example, that game from South Park where you and your opponent take turns kicking each other in the nuts. |
| Idiot Hype Factor: | Legendary / Nil |
| This rating is divided between the RPG (before-slash) and the website (after-slash). But anyway: we already have a book to condemn and contradict every religious and scientific book ever written. It was called Kult (and MAN is it a refreshing, logical, cheerful look at reality after all this). |
| Munchkin Potential: | Terrible |
| Munchkins don't understand TIMECUBE. They game evil stupid. |
| Fun Value: | Fair |
| This rating is an average between the RPG and the website. You can guess which one got the "high" end, especially if you happen to be Red, Green, or Black. |
| Glass Dildo Mastery: | Legendary |
| Before Time Cube, I had never imagined a penis with four cocks before. I don't want to do it again. |
Related Links
Official Site
Home of the TIMECUBE RPG, in all its glory. Please take a moment to thank Mike Gentry – source of all evil – for hosting it on his website.
Time Cube
The official Time Cube website. Have your crack pipe OUT! Have your acid tabs OUT! Surrender all forms of dignity and sanity!
Archives of Insanity: Timecube
Jeffton Bopeton III and the MegaTeam interview the Wisest Human, with humorous results.