LDS Game Design and Dr Grimdeath: Part 1

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.

Gary Gygax Dies

By now, of course, every geek on the planet has heard the news.  Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons has died.  He was suffering from failing health for the last year or so, and finally succumbed.  For more information and other links, you can read this article (Link removed).

As a gamer and game designer, I have to take a moment and give a tribute to Gary Gygax, the man who pretty much defined adventure gaming.  And, personally, as one who grew up playing D&D, I have to tip my hat to him.  For me, in high school, I had few friends.  The few that I had were other social outcasts.  We drew together for our weekly "game club" role-playing sessions.  We played all of them, Traveller, Boot Hill, Top Secret, but mostly we played Dungeons and Dragons.  We did some miniatures gaming, too, but by far it was D&D that held us together.

For a young boy with an innovative and creative mind, D&D provided the perfect outlet.  One by one, I saw others like me turn to drugs as a way to fulfill their need to explore, but my friends and I could do all that by living our fantasies with swords and wizards.

Unfortunately, for a while, in my life, the game consumed me, and especially my attention and time.  My senior year, my grades were horrible.  College was even worse.

But in the end, I grew up.  Now, there is much that I both like and dislike about the game.  I learned a lot about good and evil by playing the game.  I learned especially, that even when you're just pretending to be evil, it still can mess with your friendships.  And I learned that in the game, you can even find yourself being better and more noble than you might be in real life.

So, I'd like to thank Gary Gygax for making Dungeons and Dragons, and I hope his family is well.

Long-Distance Game

James and I just played a bit of a game using yahoo webcams.  Long distance!  We tried to get the audio working, but we just couldn't do it.  As a PC man, I'll have to defer to the Mac's in this case.  They do make it much easier!

We talked about a lot of thing that the game needs.  One of the biggest is rules that are written more clearly.  They have to be so clear and simple that someone who's never played a CCG before can do it.  I'll have to rework it.  Again...

But at least this time I'm not changing the actual play rules.  I'm just making them easier to understand.

James' new Blog

Hey, just got an email from James Fullmer.  He's started a blog about his experiences in art and game-making for the LDS market.  Check it out at:  http://bookofmormonbattles.blogspot.com/

Decks! and Rules!

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!

On the Phone

On the Phone - 10/3/2007 - Back to Top
Yesterday, I got an email from James H Fullmer, creator of the "Book of Mormon Battles" game.  He offered a few words of encouragement, and then asked me to give him a call and talk about LDS gaming.  I did, and we were on the phone for about an hour last night.

What a great guy!  He's been working on (and is now about to publish) a game called "Warriors of the Promised Land".  When I first heard about it, I was in a bit of shock.  Could the small niche Mormon audience actually support two CCG's?  Here, I hadn't even started yet, really, and there was competition.

But what fun to chat with him.  He had all sorts of words of advice and help to offer.  Try this, remember that when you plan for publication...  While I was getting too caught up in the scarcity mentality, he had that mindset of plenty that Covey talks about.  Dive in!  Give it a try!  There is plenty and to spare!

What a great guy!  Make sure you check out his game when it hits the LDS bookstores this month!