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.
Revelation 20:12 “…And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.”
Verse Rule: DISCARD: Remove this verse from the game. Then, for each verse in your blessing stack, choose up to one verse from your discard and place them in your hand.
Sacrifice Cost: 2
Markers: Strength
Icons: S, H, T
The Book of Revelation can be pretty intimidating and confusing, in much the same way as Isaiah, and, by extension, 2 Nephi. It’s so full of metaphoric images and rhetorical devices it’s hard to tell what’s up and what’s real.
I wanted to give the player of this verse a really strong benefit for playing it, tied in with their blessings. So, the idea is that they’re judged, and found blessed, so they get to pull things back into play.
In practical play, it turned out to be too powerful at first, because it was phrased badly. When it was discarded, it allowed itself to be pulled back into the hand as one of the chosen discarded verses. So, I rewrote that so it got discarded after the returning effect triggered. That still didn’t work, because if a player had two Judgement Days, they could do essentially the same effect.
Finally, it was decided that it had to be either unique or removed from play. In the end, I decided on the latter. It’s a cool verse, and it’s now not the game-owner that it used to be. Thank heavens for playtesting!
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 had to chuckle a little when I saw this article. Obviously, from the name of the site, I can tell this is a parody, but it sure is a sweetly done one. A while ago, someone had made some other GA trading cards that looked a lot more like sports cards, and they were pretty cool, too. http://www.nine-moons.com/?p=594
I kind of liked that these new ones were based on Pokemon, both in design, and in the way the rules text was laid out and written. Pokemon is kind of a fun game, and how my kids got introduced to the whole concept of collectible card games. Later came Yu-Gi-Oh, and Magic.
What's kind of funny about this is that I had imagined something kinda similar early on in the life of Chapter and Verse. I had thought about a sort of promotional mini-set of, maybe a dozen or so cards that could come out after each conference, based on quotes from the talks. I think it would be cool to be able to intermingle the words of the current prophets with those of the ancient and even the historical Latterday ones.
I think it's really cool to see how fast the stand-out quotes from each conference show up as meme pictures on facebook, as fast as that afternoon.
I thought that there might be copyright and trademark issues involved. Those might get sorted out under either "Fair Use" laws or through negotiation with the church's intellectual reserve. In any case, I thought it was a kind of fun idea!
Talk, Talk, Talk "Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, but have removed their heart far from me…" DISCARD: Mastery, Sacrifice Cost: 1, Markers: Trials, Themes: Trials, Life
This verse is a Scripture Mastery verse, one that’s in the new list, so it’s one that most LDS seminary students should know. It’s a fun one, whose sentiment is expressed in a similar phrase in several different places in the scriptures, like in the first vision, in Joseph Smith History 1:19. It’s usually used to refer to the Great Apostacy, where churches and religious leaders seek power and are not humble followers of Christ.
I like to think of this verse in a more personal way, and to think of my own religious observance. I mean, how often do I sit in sacrament meeting and my mind and heart are focused elsewhere? How often do I go about my daily life oblivious to the struggles of my neighbor?
Just the other day, my own neighbor came over and helped me to fix my car. I thought how often I miss that kind of stuff going on. But, on my blogs and in church, I’m eager to proclaim the gospel, right?
So, I hope this card captures that. I called it “Talk, Talk, Talk”, but I could have just as easily called it “Bla, bla, bla”. The effect is a discard effect, to be able to require an opponent to quote a verse he or she has just played. It’s a way of saying, “Are you sure you know what’s on that card? Or are you just full of talk...”
The best way to play this one is to hold onto it until your opponent is about to play a verse that’s important, like one that will close off a book. After he/she plays it, drop this one down and make them quote what he/she just played, or it goes away! If the quote fails, on your next turn, you might be able to drop in the final verse, and close up that book yourself! It’s a great way to practice your scripture mastery!
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.
Brendon and I had a bunch of friends come over last night for a few games. Jacob wasn't with us, he and mom were up at the hospital. He got admitted again on Friday.
The games were so energizing. Brendon and I started out by just explaining the game an demonstrating a few turns. There were about seven of us, so we split into two groups, one of three and one of four, and we all started playing. It was one older guy (dad to three of the boys) and another kid who likes to come to our house from time to time. As we started playing, each one seemed to get the game pretty quickly. My group was the three-player, and our game went longer. The other group actually played two games in the same time frame.
After all the games, it was amazing to see everybody just jump in talking about how fun it was. Brendon and I had a great talk afterward about the game and about how teaching the game works. It was all just great to have fun with friends with the scriptures.
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'm very excited, and I have been for the last three months or so. I've been reworking the rules, the cards, the game, all with the intent of submitting it to publishers. As I've dealt with publishers in the past, I've realized the power of praise and endorsements. Good, kind words from the right people can make a huge difference in their decisions.
So...
If you have ever had the chance to play a game of Chapter and Verse, I would love to have you write a paragraph or two saying why you liked it and what you learned from it, and to email that to me, at mrkhmusic@yahoo.com, so that I can include it in the submission. Alternatively, you can post it in the comments below.
If you haven't had a chance yet to play, let me invite you to download the cards and the rules (in the nav bar to the left) and give it a try. Then, post me your comments.
In all fairness, if you have any complaints or suggestions for improvement, please send those to me as well.
Chapter and Verse is a very unique kind of LDS game, and so publishers might now "get" quite how it all works and how popular it could be. Your words could be the assurance they need to know that it is viable and exciting!
Thanks!
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.
