LDS Card Game Verse of the Week (Month?) Isaiah 29:13

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.

An Evening of LDS Games

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.

Open letter: I Need Your Feedback!

Hello, fellow LDS gamerz!

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.

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.

LDS Game Card of the Week - Gather the Sheep

John 10:16 “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold... and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” Sacrifice Cost: 2; Markers: Wisdom, History; Themes: WHH; EFFECT: Choose two Histories verses from your deck, add them to your hand, and reshuffle your deck. I remember this one from way back in the day in my own seminary class. It was always used, both then, and later, in my mission, to show evidence of the need for God to be God of the whole world, not just of Palestine or the Middle East. When Jesus visits America, after His resurrection, He says, “And verily I say unto you, that ye are they of whom I said: Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” The point was, to prove that the Bible references the Book of Mormon. Of course, if you didn’t already believe the Book of Mormon, it was really a meaningless argument. Still, in the game, I wanted to capture the sense of gathering and binding together, so I used the fetch mechanic to represent the “one fold” feeling. If I were playing this one in a constructed deck, I’d probably fetch “The First Vision”, which lets you fetch two more Histories verse and set them right away.


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.

This LDS Game Feels Complete!

 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.

Version 11.0 of the Rules and Cards

I've just posted version 11.0 of the cards and rules.  Really, there were almost no changes to the rules.  I had considered some, but Brendon and I decided to pass on each of the changes.  So, why a new version number?

Well, the cards were so deeply changed that I decided it warranted a new version.  Here are the changes:

1 - The addition of all of the new seminary Scripture Mastery verses, as outlined by materials I found at the lds.org website.  At first I struggled to decide what to do, because I really liked a lot of the passages that were removed from the list, and I really liked a lot of the cards and verse rules I had created for them.  I the end I decided to include the old ones and add in the new ones.  So, all of the verses are marked as either SM 2013 (meaning they're included in the new list), or SM Legacy (meaning they were only in the old list).  Verses that were on the old list and are still on the new list are marked SM 2013, too.

2 - The addition of a new theme icon: Life.  These are passages that relate to being alive, and living in the temporal day-to-day world.

3 - The icons and markers are more evenly balanced now.  I did some counting, and discovered that Faith and especially Wisdom were heavily over-represented, and Histories were sadly neglected. Much of this was due to the fact that the Scripture Mastery verses are more conceptual and doctrinal.  Still, I did some re-reading of the verses, and adjusted the icons and the markers so that there is a much more equitable count.  They are not equal, but it is much more balanced than it was before.

4 - Some of the basic verses were upgraded to power verses.  I know this really doesn't change much, but if the game is ever published, and we use my current packaging strategies, it will make the game more balanced.

5 - Brendon and I went through the verse rules, verse-by-verse and corrected a lot of verbiage and phrasing to make things more consistent, and fix ambiguities.

6 - I had to rework the layout of the prototype print-n-play pdf cards, because there were new things to include, like the Scripture Mastery SM 2013/Legacy label.

So, with all of those changes, I decided it deserved a new number.  I'm really hoping that, at this point, we've got the rules and the cards to the point where we could publish.  As I play the game, it really feels more complete now.

The new rules and cards are available for printing in the left sidebar.





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.