A few weeks ago, as I was in a game shop up in West Jordan, I struck up a conversation with the owner, when I noticed he was wearing a CTR ring. When I mentioned Chapter and Verse and told him it was an LDS game based on the scriptures, he said, "I'd play that!"
With that encouragement, I set up a time to demo it for him. That was tonight. We played a quick game, and he, being a long-time hard core gamer, picked it right up. Even though I nailed him twice on the "Quote it" rule (which I rarely do when I'm demoing it), he still won. I didn't even have to let him win.
His two initial comments?
One was that it was a fun game, which I sure appreciated. Frankly, I just appreciated him taking the time go give it a whirl.
The other comment was that it might market better as a "LCG" or "Living Card Game". This is a model that a lot of very successful card games are going with right now, like Munchkin, Dominion, Killer Bunnies, and many others. The idea is that you create a unique starter set, that people buy to begin playing. That contains everything they need to start with. Then, every so often, you release expansion sets, which are also complete sets, sold in a single package (rather than sold in small "booster packs").
One cool thing about doing Chapter and Verse that way is that they way the game is designed, you wouldn't need to start with the first set. A new player could jump in and begin playing with any set.
Another thought I had would be to kind of hybrid it with collectibility. For example. Currently, there are 100 unique cards in the first set. Suppose that you divided those into 60 lower-powered cards, and 40 stronger cards. Each starter set could contain two copies of each lower card (as if they were "common"), and one copy each of the stronger cards. Then, you could also create 25 really strong cards (the "rares"), and even sell them in a separate "powerup" set.
But then, what am I talking about? I can't even get going with a first printing yet! Oh, well. At least it was fun to show the game to a receptive player.
Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.
