Recently, Reyne Rice of Toy Trends gave me this wonderful gift, a game created in Ireland called Rory’s Story Cubes. It’s super simple to play and endlessly complex in terms of its outcomes. I don’t know what makes a better game than that. And at $7.30 a set, how can you NOT?

The game consists of nine dice, each die with six different icons, 54 in all. Players roll the dice, line up the nine icons they’ve rolled, and tell a story the icons inspire. There are of course all sorts of variations on this version of the game. When Reyne gave me the Story Cubes at lunch she rolled her dice and told a story that involved her background in improvisation and theater. When my turn came, we changed the rule to be: one person rolls the dice, we take turns putting them in order, and then take turns telling the story, with our turn telling the story coming on the dice the other person has placed in the queue.

A couple of days after Reyne gave the gift, I was with a friend who was working through some difficult career choices. I still had the Story Cubes in my bag. I handed them to the friend, and suggested he roll the dice and tell a story about the next year of his professional life. The story he told was amazing and inspiring. What was muddled in his mind became suddenly very clear. What was clear was not the story itself. What was clear is that no matter what kind of roll of the dice he gets, he will have ability to author his own story. And it can be a good one.

Games are a device for exploring narratives. Good games yield good stories like Ireland grows shamrocks. Thank you, Reyne!  Roll on!