Friday, May 26, 2017

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!

2 comments:

  1. Hi! Cool homemade dice!

    Just to be clear, Rory's Story Cubes MIX line does cover the investigative horror genre with the "Mystery" MIX Cubes set, consisting of the sub-sets of Clues, Fright, and Strange. They work wonderfully with Untold: Adventures Await if the players want to be investigators of the weird and paranormal.

    Clues gives you the investigative story elements, including bloodstains, symbols of crime scene analysis, and icons of surprising lateral variety (e.g. web: a literal spider's web, "web of lies," "criminal network," etc).

    Fright gives you the horror story elements including invasive tentacles, undead things, a brain out of a jar (please put it back), etc.

    Strange gives you really, really creepy things rooted in madness (expressions of insanity) and the bizarre (e.g. fishy people). Possibly one of Rory's best IMO. This set has not been released yet, but it is featured as an add-on in the Untold Kickstarter campaign. So, it'll be available by October (first to backers, I believe).

    Emulating investigative horror was one of our priorities with Untold, and we used that genre often during the past year of playtesting. X-Files? Check! Nightstalker?
    Check! Cthulhu? Check!

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    1. Thanks for popping by and for the insight into future sets. I do have Clues and Fright already, so Strange/Mystery sound like a great addition. This little project of mine was to add some Lovecraft-specific imagery to my games -- Elder Signs, musty tomes, brain in a jar, and The Man From Providence himself. I appreciate you stopping by!

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