Do-It-Yourself Lovecraft/Cthulhu Picture Dice

In my last blog post, I lamented that there wasn't yet a Lovecraft-themed set of Rory's Story Cubes. After all, they have many different sets available, as well as licensed sets like Batman, Doctor Who, Scooby Doo, and Adventure Time (later this year). So why not some Story Cubes based on the brain-melting horrors of The Great Old Ones?

So, as I usually do when I want something that doesn't exist, I made it myself.

My Lovecraft picture dice is a mini-set of three cubes with 18 iconic images of a Cthulhu-esque nature. I went online with a list of icons I wanted to find and, sticking to simple black-and-white line art, found some suitable artwork to use. I created a template of 20 1-inch squares, and fit each of the 18 images within. I had a set of spare white 6-siders that were 1/2 inch across, so I shrank my template by 50% (so the squares were now 1/2 inch across), then printed it out on a sheet of label paper. I cut out the squares, adhered them randomly to my spare dice, and now I have my own set of Lovecraftian picture dice to use with my Story Cubes. (I also plan to use them with Untold: Adventures Await upon Kickstarter fulfillment.)

Here's the image I created. I'll leave the descriptions of what each represents up to your imagination:

Oh, and if you wish to create your own set of Lovecraft picture dice, you can either grab the image above of download the original PNG file from my Google Drive at this link. Print it off, cut it out, and glue the 18 images to three spare dice. Then roll up some Lovecraftian nightmares of your own!

Untold: Adventures Await -- The Rory's Story Cube Adventure Game Now Kickstarting!

Hey gang, long time no see!

I've mentioned my love of Rory's Story Cubes in a previous blog post. These nifty little iconic dice are a fantastic imagination jogger, giving you a million ideas and inspirations all from a toss of these picturesque cubes. I've often thought that these would make a great basis for a simple RPG-like game system. Well, the folks at The Creativity Hub have been working on such a project for a while now and Untold: Adventures Await is the result. The game is now Kickstarting, in fact.

The customizable storytelling game is structured into "acts" or "scenes", with each act revealing more of the story as the game progresses. Each tale starts with a Danger that is established (the reason your character is involved in the story), followed by Intrigue (the plot twist), Confrontation (the PC swing into action), Revelation (the true motivations of the NPCs come to light), and Showdown (the final epic ending). The system may seem a bit structured, but that's to emulate the same structures found in television episodes and/or radio plays. Although the players get to choose the genre or "type" of story they wish to participate in, the adventure grows organically through the random tossing of the story cubes as well as the flowchart-like story board of Untold as the game is played.

I'm being a bit vague as to how the game works as I don't want to give away all of the secrets in this blog post. (Plus I have another story cube-related post coming after this one!) The Kickstarter page has a How To Play video posted that shows you how the game works, and a live playthrough was just held this evening. (A video should be posted in the next day or so.) Still not sure? How about if you download Untold's Print and Play set and give it a try? (Story Cubes not included so you gotta use your own.)

You can use any set of nine Story Cubes you want, and you can even mix them up from various sets to create even more variations of tales. I plan to use the Fright Set along with the Clues Set to play some investigative horror games later! It's just a shame that there isn't a set of Lovecraft/Cthulhu Story Cubes!

(Or is there? Stay tuned for my follow-up blog post!)