New Poll: Vote for your favorite logo

Well, the results from the last poll are in and it looks like a game based on the wars and contentions between the Nephites and Lamanites would make the best board/card game! What a coincidence that is! I talked about one (here) that the church put out over 30 years ago in the seminary manuals: Nephite & Lamanite Wars. I haven't been able to play it yet, but it looks like fun.

There is also Peril in the Promised Land (one of my designs) that you can read about here. It is a cooperative game where all players take on the role of Nephite captains and attempt to retake their cities from the Lamanites, while also protecting Zarahemla from the advancing King-men.

The new poll (which will only run for 1 week) asks you to vote on your favorite logo from the following 4:

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Number 4

After the poll is over the logo that gets the most votes will become the logo for this here blog! Also, any input you might have on these logos is greatly appreciated. Don't hesitate to leave comments.

My Portfolio

Published Games


Hagoth: Builder of Ships (pre-order the game)
Being published by Mayday Games


 
Published Artwork

Nepal: Trade & Intrigue at the Top of the World
Being published (2nd edition) by BluePantherLLC. Now available!



Designed Games
Armor of God
Peril in the Promised Land
Temple Builders

Conversation with James H Fullmer

I recently was able to speak with James H Fullmer about his experiences with designing, illustrating, and publishing (via Covenant Communications) his two games, Book of Mormon Battles and Warriors of the Promised Land.



Download the conversation here.

I had a list of questions that we discussed. We didn't really read them out loud or anything, so here they are.

1. What made you first decide to design a game?
2. Was the idea Book of Mormon Battles from the beginning or did it sort of evolve to that as you worked on it?
3. How did the design process go? I mean, did you get some paper, cut it up, and mark them for cards, or how did it go?
4. When did Covenant Communications enter the picture? Did you contact them as you were working on the idea or more after you had it all worked out?
5. How did the whole relationship work with Covenant?
6. What was your process for the artwork (there are a lot of images in both games)?
7. What made you decide to go the second game Warriors of the Promised Land?
8. Was the process with that game pretty much the same as with the first?
9. Do you know the print run size for either game?
10. Do you know how successful the games have been (how many have sold)?
11. What did you learn from your experience that you would like to share with other "would-be LDS/Mormon game designers?"

This is my first dive into doing a podcast or recorded interview/conversation, whatever you want to call it. So I learned quite a bit about that. Plus I enjoyed meeting James (Jay as he prefers to go by) and learning about him and his experiences.

Hopefully this will be of benefit to someone besides me, but if not, I enjoyed it and found it enlightening.

Shapeways

Update 3/19/09: I just got the lost ship in the mail (it came with an extra one). It didn't seem like it took much time to travel via "normal mail" and not UPS.

My models from Shapeways showed up in the mail!!!


The box was extra big for the models that I ordered, but I appreciate the nice packing that help make sure things will be safe and sound as they travel around the world to me from the Netherlands!







I ordered both the ships and the Titles of Liberty. They ended up being a little smaller than I thought they would be, but they work just fine.






The Ships


We painted these red, blue, and yellow (left some white) for Hagoth. I'll be posting pictures and things of Hagoth soon. I've pretty much got the design all finished. It's just a matter of putting the whole thing together.





The Titles


The bases are supposed to look like the top of a tower. That part, as well as the pole, will be gray. Then the Title itself will be painted (I'm not sure what color; like I have said many a time, I'm not an artist).




The material is kind of weird. My wife says it reminds her of salt. But it totally works for me.

My overall experience with Shapeways has been extremely good. I ordered when they were running a 25% off sale. A couple days after I uploaded the models and order, I got an email from Elena in production. She told me that the sail part of the ship was a little skinny and probably wouldn't come out when printed. She also told me that I could take a shot at fixing it and they would still honor the sale price. I made 3 attempts and finally got one that would work well. I kind of wish she would have said something about the Titles. A couple were broken as the pole was really skinny. Anyway, there was also 1 ship missing in my package, so I emailed Elena. She found it and put it in the mail, not UPS like the original package, but it will be here soon nonetheless. All I can say is that they are great to work with and look to give the customer the best experience possible. It's quite a difference from most of my experiences with stores I walk into. I am completely satisfied.

Peril in the Promised Land

Peril in the Promised Land is a cooperative game where players take on the role of one of the captains in the Nephite army in an attempt to recover cities that have been lost to the Lamanites. They play against the game itself, the Lamanites/King-Men as they attempt to take over Zarahemla.

Players get to setup the board in any fashion they like. It is composed of hex shaped pieces that fit together to create the Promised Land. The Nephite captains start in Zarahemla and must recover 3 of the 6 cities currently occupied by Lamanite forces. Furthermore, to win the game, players must raise a total of 3 Titles of Liberty.

On the players turn he/she has the option to move, draw a card, play a card, or fortify a city. Cards allow players to do things like attack or defend. The Lamanite action for each players turn is decided by the roll of a die. The Lamanites may end up attacking, defending, or the King-Men may advance closer to the Judgment Seat (the player may also lose some of the members of his army). If the Lamanites end up capturing Zarahemla or if the King-Men arrive at the Judgment Seat, then the players lose.

Do you have what it takes to lead your Nephite army forces under the Title of Liberty to retake your homes and lands?

Publishing Excitement

Well, this is extremely exciting. I started a thread over at boardgamegeek several months ago. Well, Seth from Mayday Games here in Utah, replied with an "we're interested in publishing Mormon themed games"!!! I had no idea that there could be someone out there, not "affiliated" with church, who would be interested in publishing Mormon themed games. It's very exciting. Needless to say, I emailed him right away and am "patiently" awaiting his reply. I can't wait to see what happens! I guess it just goes to show that you never really know what you'll find until you actually start sharing your ideas and insights. People really are very open to that and willing to share back.

I also was contacted by Shapeways today. It's seems the sail on my ship model was a bit (actually a ton) too skinny. So, it's probably going to delay the shipment, but I was able to tweak the model and it's good to go now. The great thing is that I order my pieces during their sale and they are still honoring that even though I've made changes and the sale is over! Great customer service there. I get that feeling from reading through their forums about problems that people have had and how good the people at Shapeways are to help them with everything. It's great to know that there are still people like that in this world. Anyway, I can't wait to get those pieces delivered! It's going to be a whole lot of fun.

The other pieces I ordered with the ships for Hagoth were Titles of Liberty for Peril in the Promised Land. Here's another screenshot:

I was attempting to make it look like the Title was raised on top of a tower. I can't wait to see these when they get here either. I've been looking into how to print the board pieces of Peril in the Promised Land and found BluePanther. I've been corresponding with Steve there about printing hex shaped board pieces. It looks quite promising and not at all as expensive as I had first thought. Self-publishing may be in reach for more of my games than I had thought as well.

Now to figure out how I would sell them online. And how to market them myself.

Simplicity vs. Complexity

I've been involved in attempting to make my game designs better (this is pretty much what I am always up to, but it's been a little more with school out for the holidays, this gives me more time). Anyway, I've come to realize a couple of things that I just wanted to put down here.

Firstly, I've really enjoyed designing Peril in the Promised Land. I like the game a lot and think it has a whole lot of potential. The problem has become that it requires a lot of play-testing and tweaking. I don't have a lot of time to do these things so I'm not sure how quickly the game will evolve and progress. I want to see it happen, I just don't have the time or resources right now. But I think this is mainly due to the fact that the game is very complex. First off it's a cooperative game. This means that a system has to be designed that challenges the players, who are working together. Normally there is some balance because players compete against each other. We have a pretty good system. Sometimes I just wonder if it's too difficult to overcome and then, how to make it a little easier. Not an easy task. Secondly, there are a bunch of rules. I'm still trying to put together the rulebook. It's very time consuming! And every time I explain the game to someone else, I think to myself, "wow! there are a lot of things to remember!" With this complexity comes more time to make sure it all works together "perfectly."

On the other hand, simpler games don't require the same time commitment (in my limited experience thus far anyway). We've currently got Hagoth: Builder of Ships that we're working on. It's competitive and a whole lot simpler. I've been keeping track of the rules as we've designed and played the game. I've just about got the rulebook put together (ready for review by friends anyhow) and it's only 3 pages long! Quite a difference. I'm struggling through the rulebook for Peril in the Promised Land and it's already 5 pages long, with several more to be added.

I guess I'm throwing this all out because I've pretty much decided that I'm going to attempt for now anyway, to work on designing less complex games. You know, the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. Sometimes simpler is better (as long as the game is immersive, and therefore fun)!

Tweaking & Iteration

Yesterday I was able to play Peril in the Promised Land with a couple of friends. It's interesting how getting other people's perspectives on the game is very insightful. I have felt like the game is in a pretty good stage. I think things work pretty well and it's pretty balanced. Then they had a few insights as we played and after we finished (we lost!!) that really were completely logical and very helpful in making the game a lot better (at least it seems like it will be, I need to play it more with the changes to see how it all works). I guess you can tweak a game and go through iteration after iteration and, my question is, how do you know when you've finished or reached an end? Like I said, I thought things were good, but now, I wonder if other changes can be made to improve things. How much should a game be play-tested? How does one know that the game has reached an end of the design phase and needs no more tweaking?

On Board Game Designers Forum someone asked a similar question (here). Some of the response is that you can't really say how many times a game needs to be play-tested before it is "ready." It's important to make sure you are changing things up each time you play-test. One response in particular said: "remember your trying to break the game through your playtests try and find strange loop holes and other such things that will need changing to prevent certain outcomes or maybe even new strategies that you think need defined more so they may work." I hadn't thought of it that way before, but I think it is true. Each time I am able to play one of my games with a new person I get a lot of new insights that I hadn't even thought about before.

As a result I think I need to get my games to "a good point." Then I need to enlist several people at different times to play-test, with me as a player and with me as a spectator. Then I'll be able to get lots of different perspectives and the play-tests won't be the same all the time. I can also take it upon myself to attempt to play differently every time my wife and I play. It will reveal new things that haven't come up before.

I'm so glad that there are so many people out there willing to share their insights and experience, and that the internet offers us a place to do that.

Updates

Reviews
So, I was looking back over the 2 reviews I had written (It Came to Pass and Settlers of Zarahemla), and I discovered that they were pretty bad. I mean, I thought to myself, "If I were to read these, do they really tell me anything of value or something that I would be looking for in a review?" Well, I thought that they didn't do a very good job of that, so I updated them accordingly and now they are a lot better; still probably not what might be considered Superb Reviews, but definitely good enough to get the points across.


Peril in the Promised Land
Due to the Thanksgiving break and our trip to Nevada, I have had no internet connection for the past 4 or 5 days. But now that we're back I want to update our activities with Peril in the Promised Land. I ended up going to Kinkos and having them just print the board in two halves on 11" x 17" paper. It came out so much better than my inkjet at home. Then I used a glue stick (I'm still trying to figure out a better way of attaching the printouts to the board) and glued the printouts to the Trivial Pursuit board. It wasn't easy, but at the same time it wasn't really very hard. Once we got them glued, I used a utility knife and cut the edges, as the printouts were a lot smaller than the board itself. Once it was all finished I was extremely pleased. I actually felt like I had reached a point of not needing to revise or redo the board anymore. It felt fantastic!!

I ended up printing out the Captain cards on sticker paper and sticking them to one of my kids puzzle boards that we were going to get rid of a while ago (it was old and some of the pieces were missing). I didn't like the way they looked, but having them on the thicker cardboard was definitely cool. I'm going to revamp the look of the Captain cards and print them out one more time.

Other than that, I've got to finish the rulebook, which is turning out to be a lot more difficult than I had ever imagined. I'm glad that I found Board Game Designers Forum. It's given me the chance to put my ideas together in written form. I've also been able to get some guidance from others there on the forum. I'm in the process of finishing my Game Journal for Peril. Once that's finished, I'll use it to put together the rulebook. Hopefully that won't be too far into the future.

Peril in the Promised Land Update

Here's what I've put together for the board. Like I said before, I'm not an artist, but I'm putting something together. I picked up Trivial Pursuit from DI yesterday. I'm going to have the board printed today and attempt to attach it, in some manner or other, to the Trivial Pursuit board. We'll see how it goes. Then, I'll pretty much have a decent prototype put together. We're going to my wife's parent's home for Thanksgiving, so I'll be able to play it a bit with her brothers, and possibly with her mother. It should be a lot of fun. I'm going to put up pictures of the "finished" prototype after Thanksgiving. I'll post about the experience of attaching the printout to the Trivial Pursuit board as well.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving!

Board Game Designers Forum

I just started my Game Journal about Peril in the Promised Land over on Board Game Designers Forum (here). I'll probably put more about the game there than I will here, as far as the rules and components go.

Theme, Mechanics, & Immersion

I just sent off the submission of The Armor of God to both Covenant Communications and Cedar Fort. I'll be waiting patiently to see what, if any, response I get from them.

Last night I read a pretty interesting article from The Games Journal about Theme, Mechanics, and Immersion of games (here). It really made me think about what I've got going in my games. All of my pondering was focused on Peril in the Promised Land as this is my favorite of the few games I'm designing/creating right now. Personally, Peril in the Promised Land has a great theme. I mean, who doesn't want to take the lead of an army of Nephite soldiers as they go into battle against the Lamanites under the Title of Liberty, seeking to recover their lost cities and freedoms!? It's the very popular good vs. evil theme. As Andrew Hardin points out the theme should do 2 things: 1) it creates an immediate sense of immersion and 2) makes game play easier. I've been working on making game play easier. I've cut rules, making things less complex and simpler to understand and follow. I've tried to get the rules to "connect" more to the theme, kind of making the rules seem logical in the given context of the theme.

The theme of Peril in the Promised Land also gets players immersed both mentally and emotionally, as discussed in the article. Firstly, players are mentally engaged in protecting themselves from the Lamanites, while at the same time they are trying to figure out how to go about recovering the cities that have been lost to the Lamanites. There are a number of possible strategies a player could choose. Options seem to be a good thing to keep players engaged and immersed as well. The emotional side comes in, which I think is very individual or person specific. This probably hits home more with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as they are familiar with the Book of Mormon and the struggles between the Nephites and Lamanites throughout the book. Emotionally players can feel the tension that is caused by Lamanite actions and the need for your army to not only succeed, but to survive in the process.

Thinking about these things makes me wonder: Is it the theme that really attracts someone to a game in the first place? For me, a lot of times I think it is more the mechanics of the game that draw me in. For example, I enjoy Heroscape, but I first became interested when I saw it in the store and found that you could change the terrain, design it however you choose. I also wanted to play Settlers of Catan because of the hex-shaped board pieces that you set up at the beginning of play. Shadows Over Camelot appealed to me because of the cooperative nature of the game play. Maybe my question is way off. But, there are probably people who pick up a game because of it's theme. In the case of Peril in the Promised Land, I would want people to pick it up because of theme, but also because of mechanic. I want to attract people who think playing as Nephite generals in a war with the Lamanites would be fun, but also those who think playing a game where players cooperate against the game (the Lamanites) would be fun. In the end I think it is about theme and mechanics to begin with. That has to draw people into picking up the game in first place. After that, I think the author is right, it's all about immersion. Those themes and mechanics need to really immerse the players in game or the attraction of the theme or mechanic will be lost rather quickly.

Peril in the Promised Land

So here is an overview of the game I have been mentioning.

Title: Peril in the Promised Land

The game is a cooperative game where players take on the roll of one of the Nephite captains from the book of Alma in the Book of Mormon during the great war. Currently this includes Gid, Lehi, Teancum, and Helaman. Each captain has a "special power" that aids him in his play (a-la-Shadows Over Camelot). The objective is to fulfill the orders that come down from Chief Captain Moroni (these are in the form of cards). There are 5 different "kinds" of orders, like retake the city of Cumeni or raise a Title of Liberty in Omner. The players must fulfill 1 of each type of order in order to win. But, they must accomplish this while protecting Zarahemla from within (the King-men who are trying to take over the Judgment-seat) and from without (the Lamanites attack Zarahemla).

The board is pretty much a map of the promised land with cities and roads. All cities, except Zarahemla and Zeezrom, start out as occupied by the Lamanites. Dice and cards are used in the game. There is a 6-sided die that is rolled to determine what action the Lamanites take. A 4-sided die is rolled to determine the number of spaces a Nephite captain can move. Cards are used to attack, defend, raise Titles of Liberty, etc.

I'm currently finishing my own art (I am in no way an artist, but I wanted to put together a good looking prototype). I will be using some game boards that I find at DI to make the board. I found Guild of Blades online (http://www.guildofblades.com/pod.php) and I'll get my cards printed by them. And I'm using meeple (http://www.meeplepeople.com/) as the pawns players use. I'm also working on finishing up the rulebook/instructions so that I can get that printed as well.

Well, there you have it. The first game that my wife and I have designed and are in the process of prototyping. Soon I'll post regarding some other games that I'm working on.