Every once in a while, things will bubble and boil up inside me, and all of the ideas that I've had over the course of six months or a year will all burst forth into... What? Stew?
I don't know where I was going with that metaphor.
But anyway, I just finished reworking the rules. There are two big differences:
I did away with the learning game and the standard game. I found that when I taught people the game, I taught the standard game, anyway. I also combined the meta game into the shame rules doc as the standard game. The mastery game is so far from development that I shelved it, too. I also created a "Quick Start Guide" so that players can get the overall idea of the game, and give it a try, then reference the more detailed rules to answer questions, or as they get more into the game.
I did away with the "Quote Challenge" rule, and made it a DISCARD verse rule. I found that many people testing the game were turned off by the rule, and by playing the game with the possibility of a challenge hanging over their heads. Making it a verse rule follows the model of the Magic: The Gathering "Cancel", "Counter", and "Fizzle" spells.
Here in a few days, I'll put out the new cardset, too. It has more verses, about 145, and my playtests so far have been lots of fun.
Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). In addition to playing LDS games, Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.
Recently, I got a facebook message from one of my old buddies from my high/school college days. He was one of our gamer crowd, and played a lot of D&D as well as other miniatures and role-playing games.
He’d developed a game, with a prototype, that he wanted me to playtest. It was based on the old, corny B-grade horror flicks of the past. The premise is a bunch of students spending the night in a mansion with a monster. They have until midnight to 1) identify and kill the monster using weapons and items they find, 2) escape the island the mansion is on, or 3) die trying.
Our family tried it, and it was a hilarious and silly romp. It’s a cooperative game, so we were all trying to win together.
Afterward,. by a few days, I got on the phone with him and we talked a lot of cool things about game design and our game efforts. It was interesting to talk to him about Chapter and Verse, and about Dr Grimdeath, because he’s not LDS, and so that made it interesting to explain the concepts of the game.
I thought I’d share some highlights of our discussion, because it plays not only into LDS gaming, but also into game design in general. I’ll touch on each one here, in the successive parts of this posting!
Feedback Loops
There are two kinds of feedback loops in game design. A “Positive Feedback Loop” is a rule or a circumstance that encourages a situation to recur more and more frequently. One broad example, it’s the way a Monopoly game is really won or lost in the first few turns. The player that gets the best properties in the first few rounds ends up collecting more rent, and that grows into more re-investment, until he or she is unstoppable. You have to watch for these in your games, or they can make the game balance run away from you.
A “Negative Feedback Loop” is a rule or situation that makes a situation LESS likely to recur. In American Football, when you score a touchdown, you have to kick off to the opposing team, and it’s their turn to be on the offensive.
It’s important to note that the terms “Positive” and “Negative” don’t refer to any thougths about the outcome. As a player a PFL can have a very bad impact on my strategies and my play of the game, and a NFL can keep my opponents in check. Positive loops are things MORE likely to happen again, and negative loops are things LESS likely.
Early in the game, when a player closed up a book, he/she would draw blessing verses, and then continue on with their turn. I soon discovered that players could use various drawing verses (like Prayer and Keyword) effects to just keep on playing and playing, closing book after book, and win in one turn without the other player being able to do anything. A PFL was messing up the game balance. I chose to fix it like the football game. Once you close a book, your turn ends.
It’s interesting because in an LDS game, as in any game, you have to watch out for PFL’s because they can really mess up the balance of a game. On the other hand, in LDS LIFE, it’s full of PFLs. Like prayer, for example. You say a prayer and you feel great. You feel connected to God. That makes you want to pray more. Which makes you more connected...
Of course, temptation is also a PFL. If you give in once, you’re more likely to do it again.
Next: Getting to Your Core Essence
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.
So, this last weekend, we had some friends over for MTG and games, and we ended up playing a five-way game of Chapter and Verse. That's easily the biggest game we've ever played. It played pretty well, even though many of the players were complete beginners. The tabletop got a little cluttered and it was a little tricky to see the ownership of the cards. I have some ideas on how to fix that, however.
I think it only took us about 40 minutes to get a winner. The other players wanted to continue to see who came in second, third, etc... After about 50 minutes or so, we were seeing who was to come in third and we finally decided to stop. A good sign was that there were still some people wanting to continue.
That experience brought up another interesting issue. Currently, by the rules, in larger games, when one person wins, the game ends. But when the remaining players wanted to continue, the winner dropped out. It was curious because in Magic, the losers are eliminated. In C&V, the winners are. It occurred to me that the winners could actually continue playing. I mean, yes, the winner wins, and that's that, but he/she could continue playing and influence who comes in second, third, etc...
It would beat sitting out...
Thoughts?
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.
OK, enough with the big story and the bla, bla, bla...
On with the nitty gritty. In the process of making the game more fun, and playable, here's what I did with the newest version:
The most immediate change is to note that the chapters are no longer "owned" by any player, nor are they "combined", "stolen", nor "included" together. There are four chapter spaces in between all of the players, and verses are played into any of the four by any of the players. Players are, in that sense, working together to build the chapters into books. But, each book is still closed up by one player!
When a book is closed, any player that added verses to it benefits. The player that closes the book draws two blessings, and anyone else that added to it also draws one.
This also means that each player needs a good number of blessing verses to start with. I've tested 5-verse games and 7-verse games. I think I prefer the five. The games are done in about 20 minutes for two-player, 35 minutes for three.
I'm working on the "backstory", or the "Setting" of the game, to help the players feel more immersed in the game. This has been difficult, because the game is really so abstract. You're not a wizard, or a pokemon trainer, or whatever. I'll reveal this as I have it more fleshed out.
Thanks much for coming along for the ride. I'm excited to see this add to the world of LDS games, and scripture mastery games.
I just realized another issue with the rules that needs clarification: If you're playing along and you run out of verses in your deck, what do you do?
There're a couple of ideas I have right off, and I'd like your input.
1. If you run out of verses in your deck, you lose the game. In most other CCG's (Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokemon), that's the way it resolves. This also tends to make the decks that flow lots of verses a little less powerful.
2. If you run out of verses in your deck, you keep playing, but you can't draw. That would mean you'd have to have some way to pull from your discard, or your only source of new verses would be your blessing stack.
3. The only other option I can think of is that if you run out of verses, you could shuffle your discard and flip them face down into your deck and continue playing.
What do you think? Right off the top of my head, I'm leaning toward option 2. I don't know why, but it seems to be pretty sensible. Still, I'll defer to the opinions of the playtesters, if there's enough clear opinion either way.
Brendon and I just barely finished playing the two new decks against each other. Wow. What fun, to see two planned decks go head to head. It showed me a bunch of cool things:
1. "Quote" isn't as powerful as I thought it would be. It is cool, and it did help Brendon bring out lots of verses, but it wasn't as uber-powerful as I was afraid it would be.
2. The two decks really were pretty evenly matched. If he hadn't won when he did, I would have won the next turn. And the only reason I didn't win was that I didn't have enough verses to sacrifice to throw down the final combo and pull my last blessing.
3. After this game and some of the other games I've played, I feel like there needs to be some limits on the turns. Brendon, in his turn, kept drawing and playing. Then, in my turn, I kept drawing and playing. It makes for long, drawn out turns. I'm flirting with the idea of a rule that would say that when you close out a book, the play phase of your turn ends, and you move into the end phase. I dunno. I'll have to play with that. Another idea is to make more verse effects that can be played instantly instead of only in your own turn. That way the turns can be more interactive instead of so long. Maybe even some verses that can end an opponent's turn.
Anyway, these are just some thoughts. Tell me what you're thinking when you play your games!
There's lots of cool new stuff over in the playtester's page. You gotta check it out!
First of all, we're excited to announce the creation and release of two playtest decks! The first one is based on the "Quote" mechanic. It'll be interesting to see just how this one plays out. Almost every card has the ability, so if someone were good at memorizing, they'd be able to play verse after verse for free!
Then, there's the Strength of Faith! This deck is made of cards from the Strength and Faith themes. Those two play together quite nicely, bringing verses to the hand and drawing blessings.
It'll be fun to try these out and see how they play. Give them a game or two and tell me how they do!
Also, there's a new version of the rules and the first cardset. Nothing's really changed much. There was a need for a clarification. Now, verses that are played as a result of another verse's effect are not "played" but are "set". If a verse is set, its own effect doesn't trigger. Its numbers still count in chapters, but no effects. This keeps the long chains of effects down.
And, based on some feedback I got from James, I created a one-page quick start guide to get you playing right away. The details of the game are still in the rules, but to just start throwing verses down, you can start with the quick start. It's not so intimidating as 8+ pages of rules!
A couple of days ago, I got in some more playing with Brendon and Jared. This time, we had a friend of ours from Mexico playing as well, Limhi (you'll recognize that name if you read your scriptures...) In spite of the fact that he sometimes struggles with English, he did quite well, and in fact, almost won. It was interesting to see him try and quote verses in English. A couple of times, I knew the Spanish versions, so I let him quote them in Spanish.
I just got finished posting up a new set of rules, v5.4. Not a lot of changes, but a clarification that will keep the game from spiraling out of control. That's the concept of the "Set" card verses the "Played" card. Any card that I play from my hand in the freeplay or after sacrificing in the regular play phase is considered to be "played", and it's effect is triggered.
On the other hand, if a card comes into play on the table top as a result of a verse effect, it's called being "Set", and its effect does NOT trigger. However, once it's on the table, if it has an ongoing effect "while in play", that effect is valid.
I made changes to the cards themselves to reflect this difference as well. Rather that having an effect read "...play a card from your hand." it now reads "...set a card from your hand."
That way, you won't have long strings of effects, like having a card throw down another card, whose effect throws down another card, which triggers another card being played, which causes, etc. etc. You get the picture.
Also, there's now a hand size limitation rule. Now, if you start your turn with more than 8 verses, you have to take the extra verses (your choice) and put them on the bottom of your blessing stack.
Don't worry. The game's still fun. :-) Moreso, in fact!
OK, folks! I've tweaked up the rules, I've tweaked up the cards, and now it's finally online as pdf's! I'm feeling much more confident that this is the future of Chapter & Verse. It finally feels smooth, like it's settling in where it's supposed to. It feels balanced, and as more cards are added, more fun will ensue.
Here's some of the changes since the previous versions:
The turn is much more simple and streamlined. Start, Draw, Freeplay, Play, End. How much simpler can it get?
No more counting blessing points as you sacrifice verses. The word "blessings" is now used in another totally different way.
Now verses have effects that happen AS you play them into verses, rather than INSTEAD of playing them into verses.
The game is much more interactive, as you can combine your own stacks of cards ("Chapters") with your opponent's to form books.
With Quoting, Cross Reference, and the new Keyword ability, the game play responds with the scriptures more and more.
I'm really excited about the changes. With some more playtesting, we'll be able to move ahead with the production of the game!
OK, I was having some real difficulties with the basic game. It wasn't interactive enough, it didn't truly involve the scriptures enough, and it was just bogging down in too many rules.
But in my efforts to streamline it and make it more fun and scriptural, I was just making it worse and worse.
So it sat and stewed for a long time. I've been talking things over a lot with a few of my main playtesters, mostly John and Kent, as well as Brendon. I've melded a lot of the ideas they've thrown at me and I'm really excited about this latest revision. It's almost a totally restructured game.
It's also still in its infancy, so I'll work it up and post it. Unfortunately, it'll need cards with new effects, so I'll have to go through them AGAIN!
But I think I've got a good solid game base, now, that I can tweak and then expand with cardsets and cardpages. And, maybe even publish!
As I started to work out the battle game mechanic, I started thinking about how it all works. War is all throughout the scriptures. I thought that most of the verses that would use the mechanic would be Tales (white) or Trials (black), because most of the scriptures that talk about war are telling about battles, and going through war is certainly a trial.
I've long believed that even though at times, war may well be necessary, nobody really "wins". One side doesn't lose as many men or resources, and so they end up occupying the land, or getting their way, or whatever. So, really, the "winner" is the one that "loses the least".
So, in the battle mechanic, you pull a verse from one of your incomplete books, and one from one of your opponent's. Presumably, you'll pick a less important verse from yours and an important one from his. Thus, by picking the right cards, you "lose less".
Then, I started finding some scriptures where circumstances, like faith and divine intervention made a big difference in battle. So, those verses will protect books from being the targets of battle mechanics, or things like "The Title of Liberty", which allows you to search your deck for battle cards, much like Captain Moroni did when he waved the flag to recruit an army against the kingmen.
When we do a Book of Mormon set of cards, there's gonna be lots of battle-related cards. I mean, the whole books of Alma and Helaman are pretty much war, war, war... It'll be fun to see how this plays out in the game.
