Spes Magna Games

A bit more than a year ago, I blogged about Rory’s Story Cubes (see here for details). Back then, I had two of the three sets of Story Cubes. Over this last holiday, I got the third set at 8th Dimension Comics & Games.

Each set of Story Cubes includes nine six-sided dice with each die having six different pictures. In set one, the orange box, each picture is a noun, such as a flower, a lightning bolt, or a pyramid. Set two includes actions. Each picture shows one or more people doing something, such as climbing a tree, laughing, or digging a hole. My new set, in a lovely lime green box, includes more nouns, all built around the theme of “Voyages”. For example, some of the pictures include six beans (magical?), a sun peaking over a horizon, or a puzzle piece. With the Story Cubes in hand, I’ve got a powerful tool to generate adventure hooks.

“How so?” you ask.

Well, perhaps by using this format as a guide: noun-verb direct-object, corresponding to orange box-blue box-lime box, respectively.

For example, let’s say I rolled the dice, and I get these pictures: abacus, person with hurt thumb, rain cloud. Here’re two possibilities:

“A magical abacus built by a wizard after a personal tragedy controls the weather.”

“Advanced mathematical formulae discovered by researchers working for the Resistance hold the key to undoing world-wide ecological damage.”

Either one of those sentences could serve as adventure hooks. When you consider that three boxes together can be used to create about a bajillion different simple sentences, you have an enormous resource available to you. If you don’t have Rory’s Story Cubes, check them out. There worth a few bucks a set.

Tags: adventure design, Rory's Story Cubes

I seldom need much encouragement to do two things: spend money on myself and be geeky. This explains how I ended up with a set each of Rory’s Story Cubes and Rory’s Story Cubes Actions.

It happened like this:

Christmas vacation had arrived. I had two weeks off, and I’d deliberately decided to not do any of my teacher work during the holiday. Instead, I would eat, drink, and be merry. Being merry involved living vicariously through people I follow on Google+, including Matt Jackson of Chubby Monster Games. Matt Google-plussed about using Story Cubes to flesh out an NPC for a game he was going to run.

I’d never heard of Story Cubes, so I surfed the Interwaves, and ended up watching several reviews and demos on YouTube. After this, I found myself one-click shopping at Amazon dot com. A few days later, the boxes of Story Cubes arrived, and they were mine. All mine!

Since then, I’ve played with them a bit. I demonstrated them to my family. I demonstrated them to my 5th graders. The demos weren’t hard. You (1) roll all nine dice, (2) look at the pictures, and then (3) make up a story that starts “Once upon a time…” using the pictures. That’s it. There aren’t any wrong answers. For added complexity and/or more options, toss the action dice as well. These have pictures of stick figures engaged in various activities. When you’re done making up your story, pass the dice to another player and enjoy them getting to be spontaneously creative.

The game components per set consist of nine sturdy six-sided dice with rounded corners. Each face of each die has a different picture for a total of 54 different pics per set. The dice come in a sturdy box a bit larger than a pack of playing cards. The box holds itself shut via a magnet. Both sets fit easily in the outer pocket of my laptop’s carrying case. I could fit either one in the front pocket of my jeans.

This game is a great idea for some silliness with your kids, as a teaching tool for students, as an ice-breaker at a party or meeting, or as inspiration for your own writing/gaming. In the latter mode, taking my cue from Matt Jackson, here’s a quick NPC to go along the dice results shown in the picture above and to the right:

NPC’s Name: Marlena

Occupation: Marlena is a dealer for high-stakes card games (hand) held in the private residences of the wealthy (building). She’s not above skewing the odds in favor of the house (scales).

Details: Marlena questions the morality of her occupation (question mark) and fears she’s living on borrowed time (clock). She is an avid reader (book).

Personality: Marlena hates to lose (the L). She loves fine and beautiful things, especially those that are fleeting (flower). Marlena has trouble managing her personal finances (credit card).

Tags: NPC design, Rory's Story Cubes