Rory's Story Cubes

Christmas is coming to the Jackson household but more of that later. I got some of Rory's Story Cubes recently and have been playing with them every day since. I had seen these online somewhere and liked the idea. They cost about £9.00 in one of the gaming shops in Manchester which seemed pricey for only nine dice but I guess you are paying for the idea.   

Speaking of the idea behind the cubes, you roll the dice and you use the images to tell a story based on the face up images on the dice. a fairly simple idea almost like using a tarot deck as a story telling aid. Just just as an illustration I rolled a set of dice and this is what I ended up with. Nine seemingly unrelated images with which to tell a idea.

They are a game in themselves but I wanted to use them as a plot generator mainly for RPG but I have tried them as a scenario generator for miniature games. This is a little harder but still doable.

Once the cubes have been rolled the idea is to sort them into a story arc and tell the story. This is not always that easy and I guess if you are so inclined you could remove a die that does not fit in with the story or even play about with it's facing. So going from left to right the story goes as follows. The PC's come across an unhappy farmer. he was attacked by robbers who shot and killed his son and stole all his sheep.


Unsurprisingly he wants justice for his son and his sheep back. The robbers have fled with the sheep through the woods. The heroes charge of after the robbers into the dark forest and hunt them by torchlight.  On the far side of the forest they face a random choice of a dice rolling opportunity which I took as a battle. During the battle their heroes route back is destroyed so they have to look for another route. They eventually find a bridge that will take them back home but whilst crossing the bridge that have to face some sort of water monster.

Them images are not really tailored to gaming. Fish do not crop up a lot of space in most game backgrounds and in a fantasy background I guess that you would have to take your influences where you find them. I was thinking that they would work well with other game concepts such as the Five Room Dungeon over at Roleplaying Tips which I will probably try out next time I run a game.

Not speaking of Christmas as I was a minute or so ago. The house smells of fresh Christmas tree and laundry which is a nice all round smell. The tree is up (right at least) in the front room with the decorations to be done. It struck me as odd that if I tried to bring a tree into the house at any other time of year I would be in the dog house. Santa is going to be bringing me a compressor for Christmas after I found one on sale. I have some GZG stuff on order which should hopefully be here in a few days and I have some belated birthday presents (wargames magazine subscriptions) to come. Christmas is starting to sound like fun even if the tree is a bit wonky.