I've been very excited! The first four playtest games of Seeker's Quest - Title of Liberty have been quite successful and very revealing! The first tests have been using only TOL verses in randomized decks. Once I feel that the set is functional, consistent, and unbroken, then we'll do some testing with mixed decks (including verses from the Scripture Mastery set).
Since there's not as many draw or seek verses in this set, the play is very different. Also, a lot of the verse rules play well within specific stories, so I think they cater to preconstructed decks moreso than the SM set. All of that tends to lend itself to play that's more focused on icons and books than on combos so far.
We'll see how that plays out once we get into testing with precon decks. I'm particularly interested in how a battle deck will play out. I'm a bit afraid that it might be broken in a precon deck. We'll have to see! That's what platesting is for, right?
If anyone is interested in cutting out some cards and trying it at home, I'd sure appreciate it! Contact me at mrkhmusic@yahoo.com, or leave a comment below, and I'll set you up!
In the meantime, at the left, click to follow our facebook page!
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.
Text: “I saw a pillar of light, exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun...”
Verse Rule: Unique. ALSO, Quote. ALSO, EFFECT: Search your deck for up to two chosen Histories verses, and set them into the same chapter as this verse.
Sacrifice Cost: 3
Markers: Histories, Epic Event, Testimonies
Icons: W, F, HH
This verse, in many ways, is the key to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It describes the moment that God, the Father, and His son, Jesus Christ, appeared to the boy Joseph Smith in the woods near his home in Palmyra, New York, in a place we now call, “The Sacred Grove”.
This one moment expresses so many of our core doctrines and beliefs.
That God wants to communicate with his children, and does so through prophets, in all times and ages.
That God and Jesus are separate individuals that work together as one.
That God and Jesus are both physical beings with omnipotent reach.
Such a defining event expressed on a game card should be huge, right? it should be a game changer. So, to be able to drop a bunch of histories icons on single chapter in one turn can really change it up. That’s plenty powerful, to be sure. Then, to be able to quote it and play it for free, well, that just takes it over the top. That’s why it’s also Unique. It only happens once in a game.
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.
Well, earlier, really. I’ve been a tabletop gamer all of my life. I loved the early role-playing games, and I played Avalon Hill’s wargames with my friends from as early as 8th grade. I’ve come up with various game ideas over the years, too. But in the early parts of the century, as I got more and more involved in collectible card games (CCG’s, like Magic: the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokemon, which I played with my sons), I found myself wanting to make an LDS game that expressed my faith. I tried making one that was based on the Book of Mormon, but I struggled with it, and in the end, it didn’t satisfy me.
But in early 2006, an idea gelled for me, and I created a set of rules, and a set of cards. I talked about it in my Mormon commentary blog here, and here.
Rather than be a strict story-line game, it would be more abstract. The players take verses of scripture, from the seminary scripture mastery list, combine them together into thematic chapters and then close them up into books. The verses would have individual effects which would change the play of the game, just like MTG and YGO cards do. It was, and still is, a new idea in the LDS game market.
Over the years, I would work on it, abandon it, then work on it, and abandon it in a sort of creative/frustration cycle. It was usually my son that would break the frustration part by asking to play it again. That would trigger a new wave of creativity, a new version of the rules, and more playtesting, until the next cycle of frustration would make me set it aside for a while.
All the time, I thought I wanted to publish it, but I’ve never known how to accomplish that. I’ve looked at lots of options, and I’ve submitted it at times to various publishers, I’ve priced out printing, etc... but I’ve never really been sure how to proceed with it.
A few months ago, after I turned in the manuscript for my the final book of my Dutch oven cookbook contract, I started thinking about it again. I brought it out, dusted it off, and started reworking some rules ideas that had been bugging me about it. I made a whole new set of cards, and Brendon and I started playtesting it. My boys started taking a deeper role in the development and promotion of the game. Then, another idea hit, and the Church changed the official list of Scripture Mastery verses, and we remade the whole cardset again. We’re now in version 11 of the rules. I’ve been contacting a number of key people and sharing the game with them, gathering input and even endorsements.
Last week, I met with a friend who owns a game store, and I demo’ed the new Chapter and Verse for him. He was very positive and his suggestions were more directed toward how to get the the game published and distributed, rather than any fixes that needed in the game.
A switch turned inside me that night. I realized for the first time inside me that this game needs to be published and that it will be published. I’m not sure when it will happen, but there are now several options on the table to get it done. For the first time in the 7 years I’ve been working on this game, it feels ready and it feels like it will actually happen.
And that is very, very 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.
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, 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.
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.
One of my friends at work has a rather unique hobby. He likes to collect 3D characters, and using a software called "Poser", positions them, costumes them, and places them in a 3D setting, which then is rendered out as a flat jpg, or a movie (which is what he usually does).
So, he took a stab at creating a scene for a card. This one is for "Thou Shalt Not Kill" (the picture is, even though the card template is another verse).
I realize that both the template and the 3d rendering may well be a work in progress. BUT IF THAT CARD DOESN'T ROCK, THEN I DON'T KNOW WHAT DOES!!!
