Christmas with the Cubes

I received a pack of Rory's Story Cubes as a Christmas present from my son. A set of nine six-sided dice, each face inscribed with a different image. Examples include: a question mark, a book, a shooting star, a hand, an eight-pointed star. The dice themselves are quite heavy and of beautiful quality (I play a lot of wargames and have an extensive collection of dice, not many of which match the story cubes for sheer quality).

On reading the "rules", it seems the game can be played in at least two ways. Firstly, roll three dice and use the pictures to describe a character. Secondly, roll all nine dice to tell a story. Here are some examples, generated after a particularly delicious (and huge) Christmas meal ...

1) Character

Three Dice: Question Mark, Book, D6
Character: An RPG PC. He doesn't know who he is, so rolls a D6 and consults a rule book.

2) Character

Three Dice: 8-point star, walking stick, house
Character: An old man, hobbling with a walking stick. He is heading home but gets lost. No matter which way he turns, he can't find his way home.

3) Character

Three Dice: Dragon, Apple, Wand
Character: A wizard who tricks a dragon with a golden apple, with the aim of retrieving a wand from the dragon's treasure pile.

4) An Event

Three Dice: Abacus, Lightning Bolt, The World

Event: A calculation goes wrong which causes massive storms and the world is thrown into post-apocalyptic nightmares.

5) A Story

Nine Dice: Sheep, Walking Stick, Pyramid, Sleep, Hand, World, Fish, Shooting Star, Book

Story Seed: It's night time and the world is asleep. A shooting star streaks across the sky and hits the ground, breaking the entrance into a pyramid. An old shepherd, who has had fish for supper, rounds up his flock with his crook and moves them to safety. Deep in the bowels of the pyramid, a book whose cover is stamped with a red hand, begins to glow.

6) A Story

Nine Dice: Apple, Moon, D6, Worried Face, Mobile Phone, Speech Bubble, Eye, L Plate, Keyhole

Story Seed: It's night time and a crescent moon rides low in the sky. An apprentice peeps through the keyhole. His mentor is speaking in some strange language into an even stranger device (Apple iPhone :-) ). When the mentor listens to the device, he has a worried expression on his face. There's a chance things will go badly wrong after this conversation. 

I think the cubes would make an excellent party game. I might bring them down to the next Fiction Fix. They certainly get the ideas flowing, even if it can be a bit of a stretch to include all the dice (the shepherd's fish supper, for instance).