If you’ve been reading GeekDad for a while, you may already be familiar with Rory’s Story Cubes, a set of dice with little pictures that can be used to create stories. I’ve seen a lot of other similar types of writing prompts, from the StoryWorld Create-a-Story sets to Daniel Solis’ Writer’s Dice to the Storymatic. Here’s a new one that caught my attention: Storyteller Cards by Jason Tagmire.
Each of the 54 cards in the deck has a slew of different features, as you can see from the two sample images below: Character, Item, Action, Location, Rank/Suit, Mood, Season, and Letter.
Storyteller Cards are currently on Kickstarter—they’ve hit their goal already but have a few more days left in the campaign. You can get a deck of the cards for $10, which will come with a PDF of the manual, which includes several mini games designed by people like Daniel Solis, Charles Beauvais, Scott Almes, and more. Up your pledge by $11 and you can get a hard copy of the manual as well. Plus there are other add-ons like a Mad Libs–style notepad for kids to make up stories, a “Comic Challenge” notepad for making comics, and a “Director’s Cut” pad for making up goofy movies. Hmmm … maybe Hollywood should take note.
I met Tagmire (also the designer of Pixel Lincoln) at PAX East and he showed me some of the sample art by Campbell Whyte, and it’s a lot of fun. I like the style and the fun list of characters and items, and the fact that the cards are chock-full of different ideas you can use.
Whether you use their pre-made notepads or just get the deck and come up with your own ideas, Storyteller Cards look like a fun way to get the creative juices flowing. Visit the Kickstarter page for more information.
