We have been working diligently on the next set of Seeker's Quest cards! A Book of Mormon set! This set will be called "The Title of Liberty" and it will be based on all of the exciting missionary and battle stories from Mosiah through Alma, and on past Helaman into 4 Nephi when Christ himself comes to America!
We've contracted out a lot of the images and here is a spoiler/sample of some of the new cards, one at a time:
Verse: BoM, Alma 17:34
Text: “And he.. stood to contend with those who stood by the waters of Sebus; and they were in number not a few”
I always loved this story as a kid. It was cool and exciting, and I think the artist her has captured the excitement and danger of Ammon defending the King's sheep.
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.
Verse: GConf April 2017, Dieter F Uchtdorf, Sun AM Sess
Text: “God knows you perfectly. He loves you perfectly. He knows what your future holds.”
Verse Rule: DISCARD 2: Seek any verse, then end your turn.
Sacrifice Cost: 2
Markers: Faith
Icons: FF
This “verse” is one of the Latter-Day voices set, and the text is taken from General Conference of April 2017. I loved hearing this reassuring quote in conference. It’s a chance to look forward into the future with faith that Heavenly Father loves me and has all prepared for me. While I still need to my part, it’s good to know that the path is there.
With that in mind, I made this verse able to reach “into the future” and pull forward another verse from your deck. This allows you to pull one of the verses needed for a combo to your hand.
This is an amazing ability, so I had to make sure that it had some limitations. First of all, It’s a DISCARD 2 rule. That means that you’ll have to discard a total of three verses to be able to seek one. Second, you’ll end your turn immediately after the play, so you’ll have to wait a turn to be able to use the verse you just drew.
All of that means that it’s a Power Verse. It’s a great one to include in just about an combo-based deck!
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.
Here are a couple of new verses for the "Latter Day Voices" set, from this past General Conference.
This first one is from my favorite talk, about how we should celebrate the diverse group that the church is. I love to listen Elder Holland. He always gives me hope.
This other one is from the Priesthood session. It was about serving in your church callings.
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 week, I was all excited to start working on the Title of Liberty cardset, printing them out and getting them cut and sleeved, ready for playtesting. By the way, if you want to help playtest, just email me!
Then my son and I were talking about decks from the Scripture Mastery set, and he started wondering out loud if he could make a One-Turn-Kill deck. In Yu-Gi-Oh, that's where you kill off your opponent in, obviously, one turn. In this case, it would be a One-Turn-Win, since nobody dies in Seeker's Quest.
I thought, No way. It can't happen. I've set all of the verses where you receive blessings to have high sacrifice costs. But he thought that he could get enough draw verses going to overcome that. I was still skeptical, but I was, honestly, scared.
Well, to shorten the long story, he did it. It was a wicked deck, filled with verses that allowed him to draw blessings, and verses that allowed him to draw verses, both from his deck and the discard. Three games in a row, he won before I even got a chance to freeplay my first verse.
In the game design world, this is known as "Breaking the Game". I would have been thrilled if we had discovered this in the early playtesting phases of making the game. Instead, it came to light after the cards were designed and already available to the public! Yikes!
Seriously, I was quite dejected.
But, soon after, I regrouped, and he and I started talking about ways to "nerf" the verses in question.
Let me explain that. In his video/online gaming circles, if a game company makes a facet of a game weaker or harder to use, it has been "nerfed". To understand this word, think of a real sword, and next to it, a Nerf sword. That should clear up any confusion.
So, we had to nerf the blessing draw verses, and we did that by setting it up so that after receiving the blessing, you end your turn. That way, the other guy gets to play. We also nerfed the verse draws, so that they're not so many, or for greater cost. And, the few verses that pull from the discard, like "Judgement Day" don't pull quite so many, so easily.
That meant that I had to rework the graphics of the verses, and re-upload them into The Game Crafter's website. It took me a while to do all that, but it's done, now. Anyone who buys any of the Seeker's Quest products (Full games, boosters, or pre-con decks) will all contain the new versions of the verses.
There are a few of you who have bought the game already, and for you, if you contact me, and tell me which game set you bought, I'll make up a special booster with the right cards and get it sent off to you.
Here are a few of the "new" verses:
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.
I've been working on a first draft of a whole new set of Seeker's Quest verses!
This set is tentatively titled "The Title of Liberty" and will cover the books of Alma, Helaman, 3rd Nephi, and maybe 4th Nephi as well.
There are some fun new mechanics! One is called "Battle". When a battle is activated, your opponent puts verses from his/her deck into his/her discard. If that happens enough, you can cripple your opponents. Remember, unlike Magic, or Yu-Gi-Oh, having an empty deck doesn't lose you the game. However, with nothing to draw, you're out of resources, and it will be difficult to carry on!
Another mechanic is the "Cross Reference". A cross reference verse will mention another verse. If you have that referenced verse in your hand when you trigger the Cross Reference effect, you can set it immediately.
We're also exploring the markers, with some new ones, like Righteous and Unrighteous Characters, and Locations. The "Wartime" marker boost the Battle effect.
So, what does all this mean?
Well, first I have to finish the first draft of the verses. I'm making them all on a big spreadsheet. Then, when I've got them done (I'm shooting for about 125 finished cards), then I'll flow the spreadsheet into a form and print out some prototype cards. These are the ugly ones, without graphics. Then, I'll tediously cut them apart and sleeve them.
Then the real work begins! Playtesting! We'll test the set in isolation, meaning using randomized decks only of the new set. We may find some problems that we'll have to fix. Then, we'll mix the new verses in with the original Scripture Mastery set, and test that mix, using random decks. Finally, we'll make some decks and test those against each other, using both sets.
If you're interested in playtesting, just let me know by emailing me at mrkhmusic@yahoo.com, and we'll get you in on the party!
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.
There's been a lot happening in this little card game's world lately! It's all very exciting, and a lot of work.
First of all, we've been rebranding. It turns out that there's another scripture based game on the market already that got published using the name Chapter and Verse. It actually looks like a pretty cool game. While it's been a challenge to rebrand, it's a good thing for us, too. My use of the Chapter and Verse name was always a "place holder", and I was never certain I wanted to use the name in publication. Now, we brainstormed, researched, and have chosen the name "Seeker's Quest".
In addition to having a more enticing, exciting sound, it also ties in better with the game's theme and backstory, as well as connecting strongly with advanced achievement gameplay.
I've also been preparing the graphic look and feel of the game, setting up prototype logos, icons, and cards. That's been very time consuming, as it's difficult to find royalty-free graphics for almost 200 cards! Still, I've been very pleased with the results so far.
Here's the card back design:
And here's an example of the face of one of the cards:
Most of this is being shared and posted over at the new Facebook page, at https://www.facebook.com/seekersquestgame. I hope you'll join the fun over there, for regular posts and updates as the new cards get ready for publication!
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, after reworking the card set, which increased the number of cards by over 50%, and redoing the layout, and printing the pages and pages of cards, then cutting them and sleeving them, Brendon and I finally got a chance to playtest this cardset. I truly hope it's the last test. I've been working and reworking these cards in this LDS game for over seven years, now! And always with the Scripture Mastery verses.
We played two quick games, and they were both thrilling. These cards are so much more balanced and flexible than ever before. With the addition of the Life icons and evening out of the other icons, the game was much more playable. There were more options, but it wasn't overwhelming!
I was concerned that there would be certain verses that would be too powerful. There were some powerful cards, it's true, but no one verse dominated the game. There was plenty of quoting and even some quote challenging, but again, it didn't rule the play. Since Brendon had studied many of the verses in seminary, for Scripture Mastery, he was able to knock off quite a few quotes.
We played with random verses in our decks, as if we had just opened the game out of the box. We used one set of verses as our base to draw from. We'll have to try and work with constructed decks sometime soon.
We also discovered that Brendon's work on this whole project has almost earned him the game design merit badge. This is a relatively new badge, only about a year or so old.
At any rate, this is a great LDS game. I'm really proud and excited to have been able to work on it all this time. I really, finally feel like this revision is the most complete of all the versions of it so far!
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.
In my recent efforts to prepare and promote Chapter and Verse, I had a visit with a seminary teacher. He was very helpful in a lot of ways, and one was to let me know that the Church was making some changes to the Seminary Scripture Mastery verse lists.
If it’s been a while since you’ve been in Seminary, or if you joined the church after your teens and never attended, here’s an explanation. Those in the Church leadership that oversee the Seminary Program and its curriculum choose 100 passages, 25 from each of the standard works (The Old Testament, The New Testament, The Book of Mormon, and The Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price, combined). The Seminary students spend each year learning about and even memorizing the 25 scriptures that are part of that year’s curriculum. After the four years of High School, each student should, in theory, have a good command of all 100 passages.
Now, since the entire first set of Chapter and Verse cards is all based on the 100 scriptures of the Scripture Mastery set. And suddenly, that was changing! I got a copy of the new lists from the Church’s website at LDS.org, and I set myself to revising.
Several things happened:
One, most of the verses remained unchanged. A few were lengthened, others were added, and some were removed, so that the final tally would still be 25 per course.
Two, I really liked a lot of the cards that were now no longer a part of the Scripture Mastery List. Faced with the idea of removing them, I decided to keep them in the set as sort of “Legacy” cards. So, I added in new cards, and new verse rules for all of the additions.
Three, since I was taking so much time to revise add in so many cards, I was going to use this as an opportunity to revise the entire set in a few ways. One was that I wanted to add a sixth theme icon: Life (Things dealing with the earth, nature, and the practicalities of temporal existence). As I read through the new verses, there were lots of opportunities for that.
Also, the themes were way out of balance in the original set. There were almost twice as many “Wisdom” verses, for example, as “Histories”. I went through and counted each icon and each marker, and did some thematic revisions to even the numbers out some. They are still not exactly equal, but they are much more so than before.
So, the current themes are:
1 - Strength: Represented currently by a Red Shield. This is the theme of action, of doing, of taking a stand, of holding fast to your beliefs.
2 - Wisdom: A glowing Yellow Candle. The theme of knowledge, of doctrine, of understanding, and of living in accord with that knowledge.
3 - Faith: Represented by the Blue Eye of Faith, spoken of by Alma. When we look to the Heavens and believe, our lives are full and complete.
4 - Histories: A White Page, with writing. The scriptures are full of stories and characters, teaching us by example how to choose the right.
5 - Trials: Represented by a Struggling Fist, surrounded by Dark Purple. All may seem to be black as we face our difficulties, but as we overcome them, and the dawn comes, the darkness starts to fade.
6 - Life: a Green Leaf. This is the theme of our home, our earth. We are born to it, live in it daily, and will eventually return our bodies to it.
All of the verse cards relate in some way to one or more of these themes, and that’s how the verses are added into chapters and eventually into books! That’s how you become a Master of Chapter and Verse!
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.
After banging my head against my computer for a frustrating morning, I finally got the latest revision of the cards prepped as a PDF and set on the site! You can download them on the left, or by clicking here!
Now there's a common thread through the phraseology of the verse rules, the Mastery challenge DISCARD effect is now in place, and it's all ready!
Soooo....
Pleeeeeze give it a try and start playtesting it! Let me know how it all goes. It is a bit intimidating to print and cut apart all of those cards. There are 143 cards, and each one is a set of six on its own page. I haven't yet figured out how to merge my database to flow them so that there are six unique cards on each sheet.
But, you can print them all out, then cut one off of each sheet, and you'll have enough to play. Then, if you cut them all out, you'll also have enough that two people could make unique decks and test your deckmaking, so the error does have its advantages. I also recommend that you put the verses into plastic sleeves (available dirt cheap at hobby stores and card shops), so that they're easier to shuffle!
Thanks so much for giving it a try!
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, my son and I have been working on a new set of cards. We're about a third of the way through the first versions (unplaytested) already. It's all based on the books of Alma, Helaman, and 3 Nephi. We began by choosing 9 stories that we wanted to include specifically. The majority of the verses will be from those. There will be some extras that will fill in gaps.
The stories include:
Alma, Amulek, and the conversion of Zeezrom
Ammon and Lamoni
The massacre of the Anti-Nephi-Lehis
The preaching and death of Korihor
The Kingmen Revolt and the Title of Liberty
The Lamanite Wars and the 2000 stripling warriors
The prophecies of Samuel the Lamanite
The Gaddianton Robbers
The appearance of Christ in Zarahemla
There are some exciting new mechanics and ideas, including the Battle mechanic. Let's face it, most of the last half of the Book of Mormon is wars. There's still some great doctrine in there as well, though.
There are now character verses, which can be either righteous or wicked. There's a new mechanic called Convert, where a wicked character verse can be replaced by the righteous version of the same character.
There are also now location verses, which establish a setting for the chapters they're in. These can give bonuses to certain verses with the same location marker.
I'm very excited, so far!
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.
In Collectible Card Games, balance is a very interesting concept. I mean, you want to have some stronger cards in your set, and a few really tough ones so that people get excited about collecting and playing those cards in their decks. So, how is it that a game can be balanced if some cards are so powerful?
Achilles heels
One way to impact the powerful cards is to instill some weakness in the card itself. Make the special rule such that it’s powerful impact only comes into play in certain circumstances. This is the limit on “The Work of God” and “The Glory of God” Their Ability only triggers when they’re together.
Other Powerful Cards
Another way to temper the power of a big bad card is to have other big bad cards that can stand up to it. In Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh, the biggest baddest monsters always have to deal with other bigger, badder monsters.
High costs
In the economy of the game, more powerful cards should be harder, or “more expensive” to play. Pearl verses, for example, all cost a sacrifice cost of at least 3 to play, one even costs 4.
Rarity
One simple way to balance out powerful cards is to make them rarer. This can be done either in the game itself, by using the “Unique” special rule, or in the meta game, by including fewer of the powerful cards in the sets or packs.
Ultimately, it takes a lot of playtesting to determine if a set of cards is balanced.
Brendon and I made decks tonight and played a game or two. I’m very pleased that both of our constructed decks played very well against the other. Neither one felt to be too overly powerful. I don’t mind if a deck is powerful, as long as it’s not an automatic win every time. As long as something can bring it down, it’s good by me.
Last week, we also playtested some games with random decks made from a set of one of each card. That played out pretty well. Then, we added an extra set of “normal” (not powered) verses (so there were two of each of those, and one each of the strong verses). Those games played out pretty nicely as well.
I’m still finding verse with ambiguous wording, or other errors, but those are becoming fewer, and I’m getting more and more confident in the balance of the verses. It’s exciting.
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.
I’ve been bubbling over, lately, with ideas for a new set of verses! I’ve been really excited about it, but I haven’t had any time to do much other than brainstorm an mull things over on my way to and from work.
This set will be set in the Book of Mormon, and will feature stories and lessons from Alma, Helaman, and probably 3rd Nephi. So far, I think I’ve chosen these stories to focus on:
The conversion of Zeezrom
The conversion of the Lamanite kings
The rise and fall of Korihor
Title of Liberty and the Kingmen rebellion
The Lamanite wars
The Gadianton Robbers
The preaching of Samuel The Lamanite
The arrival of Jesus Christ in America
Much the content of those three Book of Mormon books is taken up describing wars and conflicts of various kinds, and so I’ve been working on a battle mechanic, to represent that. It’s kinda tricky, because I don’t want it to become a wargame. I don’t want it to simulate one player attacking another, but rather, a battle happening. The tricky part of that is that it has to be activated by a player. And, in order for that player to want to activate a battle-related verse, there has to be some in-game benefit.
Where the first set (Scripture Mastery) was all based in conceptual and doctrinal scriptures, there wasn’t much by way of stories. This set, on the other hand, will have a lot of Histories icons, and new Markers like, “Righteous Character” and, of course, “Unrighteous Character”. Special rules of many verses will play into those markers.
There will also probably be fewer Pearls and fewer “Keyword” verses.
As before, my goal will be to make the set playable both by itself, and combined with the Scripture Mastery set. The Scripture Mastery set is still in playtesting, and it's making for a great, fun, and consistent LDS game. I want to test the overall set a few more times, and then our playtest team will start building constructed decks and we'll see if it's still balanced.
I’ll definitely keep you posted on how it all comes out!
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.
We interrupt your blog browsing with a CHAPTER AND VERSE SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!
Here are some fixes for some of the cards. The set you can currently download at the left already contains these changes.
#121 is now named "The Ultimate Blessing", and its special rule now reads: "Unique ALSO, EFFECT: Keyword “Father/God”. ALSO, If this verse was played during your play phase, you may draw three blessings, then end your turn."
#38's special rule now reads: "EFFECT: Exchange chosen verse in one of your chapters with a chosen verse in your discard (its special rules are applied)."
Also note that even though Pearl verses have a "P" written in each space in the theme icon area, it still only counts as ONE icon of any ONE theme.
Thank you. We now return you to your regularly scheduled bloggingz...
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.
I mentioned that my son and I have been playing each Sunday. That's been a lot of fun, and it has also revealed a lot about the game.
One thing I discovered is that there is way too much drawing from and searching of the deck. One can play on and on, while the opponents are sitting scratching their noses. There are a few options to stop this, of course, like the quote it challenge, but that can be a bit tricky to time, and you have to have verses available to sacrifice.
Another issue was poorly worded verse rules and effects, as well as power adjustments that needed to be implemented in some individual verses.
Finally, I wanted to start implementing some of my previous ideas, like the pearls. I think the location verses will have to wait for another set, but I also wanted some extra-powerful cards that could make up the "rares" of the game.
So, over the last few days, I've been setting up the spreadsheets so that I can flow the verse data into card format, then I adjusted some of the existing verses. Finally, Brendon and I sat down and started discussing and working out some of the power cards. That was a lot of fun. Here we are, reading the verses, discussing the meanings, and interpreting the meanings in game terms. It was like scripture study, but it was fun, not drudgery. In the context of the game, it was a whole new experience!
Of course, now, we need to rewrite the rules to accommodate the new cards and some of the new things we've been trying out. This is version 9.0 of the beta rules! We just keep on tweakin'!
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.
Since the 2008 Curriculum for the seminary program is all about the Book of Mormon, we’re starting to work on a cardset of 100 verses focused on the Book of Mormon! There’ll be a few new game mechanics, like battle, and an increased focus on characters and the Histories theme.
What I need from everyone that comes here is some help! Take just a minute and leave a comment on this blog entry. Tell me your favorite:
1. Book of Mormon verses
2. Book of Mormon characters
3. Book of Mormon stories (that my teacher tells to me…)
Let me tell you some of mine to get you started!
1. The conversion of Zeezrom. What a story. I’d love to see that one written up and shot as a movie! It’s got everything. Intrigue, murder, politics… Everything you need for a good action show! And it gets me everytime I read about Zeezrom leaping up from his sick bed, after Alma and Amulek give him the blessing.
2. Christ coming to America. Another powerful story. So much has been written about this one, that I’m not sure what I could add in a little blog here.
3. The journey to the Promised Land. I love studying Lehi’s borderline dysfunctional family. It gives me hope for my own. Of course we only get to see it through Nephi’s eyes. I often wonder what it would read like if Sam had wrote it. I mean, he’s righteous, but he would have still seen it all from a different perspective.
4. The Final Battles in the end would make a great movie as well. A sad, sad tragedy.
Anyway, you folks tell me what your favorites are!
