Doom and Redemption!

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.

Latter-Day Voices

Each time General Conference rolls around, I have a lot of fun on Twitter and Facebook! I love livetweeting what I'm hearing, and reading the thoughts that others post. You can kind of get a feeling for the zeitgeist of Mormondom based on the lines they tweet. Those are the quotes that hit people.

So, I pick out some of the more commonly tweeted and retweeted lines, and I've started to make those into verse cards! Between last year's conferences and this year's, I'll soon have enough for a booster to make available.

Here are some of the ones for this year:

This one, named "Crazy Life" came from Pres Uchtdorf's Saturday talk about simplifying life. I grabbed that one word and decided that was the power of the verse. I'll make it simple, with the Quote mechanic!

When Elder Maynes talked about the pottery class, and then the sister after him also mentioned the concept in some hymn lyrics, I knew that would make a great verse card. Especially since the potter's whee is such a cool visual. This quote was a nice gem of wisdom, so the icons were easy to choose. I didn't think this one needed any special rules.

So, those will do instead of the regular featured card of the week, right?




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.

What Happened? Exciting news for this LDS Game!

Hello!

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.

Chapter and Verse: The Past and Future of My LDS Scripture Game

This adventure all started for me in early 2006.

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.

New Cards, New Rules

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.

Prototype Card Design!

Prototype Card Design! - 4/2/2007 - Back to Top
OK, check this out.  This is a protoype of a basic card design.  It was done by Diego, of Varego Design



Keep in mind that, as cool as this looks, it's still in flux.  We're still working on details.  The forest graphic is generic, and will change, for example.  The "Theme" and "Topic" words will be replaced by actual themes and topics.   Still, it's very exciting to see a card begin to emerge.  The block colors that are on the downloadable cards are sooo rough.  It's nice to see some real graphic images.  Let me know what you think!