SaltCon

I just found out that there will be another game convention (we have the yearly Gathering of Strangers in Salt Lake each summer) in February in Salt Lake City. It's called SaltCon: Bringing flavor back into gaming! (link to the website). It will be held on University of Utah's campus at the Fort Douglas Officer's Club (here) on February 26, 27, & 28 of 2010.

It will cost you $10 for a single day pass or $25 for all three days. They also have family rates set up. They are also offering the option for you to volunteer, which will get you a discount on your registration fees.

For me, one of the most exciting things is that they've set up a game competition! It is called the Ion Award design competition. From the flier for the competition (here): "Judges will be representatives of game publishing companies who produce freelance designer games, qualified game store employees, and/or published authors." It will cost $5 for you to enter your game in the competition and you are able to enter as many games as you would like. I've got to get my games ready!!

Talking Title of Liberty: Total War

I recently talked with Darren Andrews about his experiences modding and working on the Title of Liberty mod he did on Rome: Total War.

Here is a list of the questions I had going in (not that other things didn't come up as we talked):
1. What is modding?
2. What got you into modding games?
3. What are the legalities involved in game modding?
4. How long does it take you to mod a game?
5. How many mods have you done?
6. What made you decide to do a Book of Mormon based mod?
7. Tell us a little about the nature of the game: how it's played, what special features are included, etc.
8. How were you able to get other artists involved in the project?
9. Any idea how many times the game has been downloaded?

I also asked him a bit about board and card games that he had worked on designing earlier in his life. He worked on a large Book of Mormon war game and a more card based game with the theme based on the Sons of Mosiah and their missionary efforts. Pretty sweet!! I hope he gets up to his attic sometime and pulls out those old designs.

Enjoy!



Click here to download the .mp3 file

You can find the link to download Darren's mod on the Book of Mormon Battles website (here, hosted by James H Fullmer).

Scott J Wakefield

I wanted to share a little about the artist who is doing the art for Hagoth: Builder of Ships. His name is Scott J Wakefield (check out his portfolio). Personally, I think he's done a great job with Hagoth. The images I've seen look outstanding, and, as I've said before (numerous times), I can't wait to get a copy of the final published game in my hands!!

Scott recently finished his Master of Fine Arts at Utah State University. He also just published a children's book entitled Woodchuck Chuck (here's a link to the free ebook). You can also purchase a hard copy for $12.95 from his website.

Sons of Mosiah

Not exactly what you would call related to games, but I thought I'd share it anyhow.

Jay Fullmer has started his own company: Sons of Mosiah. The focus right now is in developing a book. The book, titled Hidden Stories of the Book of Mormon, will include over 160 pages and will relate, using Jay's paintings and illustrations, some of the "less well known" stories of the Book of Mormon.

As part of the project Jay made a trip to Central America (Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala) for research. During the trip he collected props and reference pictures for the paintings for the book.

This project sounds very interesting and I'm excited to see the progress as Jay shares it through his blog. I leave you with a couple of Book of Mormon images courtesy of Jay.

Video Reviews Coming Soon

I've already said that I'll be posting a video review of Settlers of Zarahemla, as it received the most votes as the favorite. But I've decided to do as many video reviews as LDS themed games I can get my hands on. One of the guys from our little group of locals (here in Logan; we get together to play-test each others designs) is a frequent DI (Deseret Industries) shopper. Anyway, he's agreed to picking up LDS themed games from DI for me whenever he sees them. Last night he brought 3 for me!!: Warriors of the Promised Land, Missionary Impossible, and Building the Kingdom. So, look for reviews of these games soon.

Total War Title of Liberty Mod

Darren, from the UK, is a video game "modder." And he did his thing on Total War a while ago. He added Book of Mormon names and places to the game, allowing players to enter the Promised Land and the battles that took place between the Nephites and Lamanites! Check out this game trailer:


View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com


As it is a mod, you will need a copy of Total War with the Barbarian Invasion expansion, along with the mod file provided by Darren, via the Book of Mormon Battles website (link).

On the Book of Mormon Battles page, near the bottom, Darren gives thanks to several who contributed to helping him complete the project. It looks like there were a bunch of people who helped out. It's great to see that so many are open and willing to share their talents with others.

Overall, it looks like a fantastic game! I really need to get a copy and try it out.

Facebook-ified!

So, I took the plunge (and I consider it to be one). I decided to add my blog here to Facebook. I'm not sure this will accomplish much, but perhaps it will get out to more people than I've been able to find thus far.

Furthermore, I've added the Facebook widget thingy here on the right. Maybe not the most efficient thing in the world, as whatever I post on Facebook will also be posted here, but it makes it easy for others to find this blog or vice-versa find the Facebook page via this blog.

Through this experience (I'd never used Facebook before) I also set up my own Facebook profile. So, now other people I know or once upon a time knew can "add me as a friend," which is a very interesting idea. I mean, I might barely know them or barely knew them like 10 years ago. How much friendship is really there? So anyways...

Isn't social media super exciting!?

BookofMormonBattles.com

A few weeks ago I talked with James H Fullmer about his games and his experiences designing them and getting them published (link). Today I wanted to talk a little about his website: www.bookofmormonbattles.com.

Jay has put a lot of stuff up on his site. The first link goes to a page of games. It highlights his 2 games, Book of Mormon Battles and Warriors of the Promised Land, and also shows off his Book of Mormon chess set that he designed! Below that though, he has several games that you can play online or print and play on paper. The Book of Mormon Match Game is a nice online matching game created using his artwork from Book of Mormon Battles.

Weapons of War (link)
This section of the website is pretty cool. Jay goes through, step by step of how to make padded weapons (swords & shields currently, with more weapons to come). He does this both in written format and via video. Here's the video of how to create a padded sword (looks pretty fun)!


Watch Making a Level 1 Foam Padded Sword in Entertainment | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

He also has an "interactive" (interactive because you can move around and look at things and even zoom in) map of the Promised Land. Jay says that the map is based on the book Mormon's Map by John L Sorenson. It would be cool to add in some 3d buildings for the cities and stuff like that (a la Google Earth).

All in all, it's a great site to learn more about Jay Fullmer and his work, what he thinks, what he likes to do, etc. I'm sure that kids out there would highly enjoy putting together some padded weapons to use on each other.

Orson Scott Card Talks About Games

I received a link this morning (read it here) to an article written by Orson Scott Card talking about LDS themed games (focusing on trivia games), his experiences with them, what he liked and didn't like, etc. Needless to say, I was very excited to see that people really do think that LDS themed games can be fun and that they NEED to be fun!

Now, how do I get my fun LDS themed games out for everyone to play and enjoy!!?

A Gathering of Strangers

That was a whole lot of fun!! I was able to make the trip down to Salt Lake City on both Friday and Saturday. I had never attended A Gathering of Strangers, or any game convention for that matter, before, but I really enjoyed it and can't wait for next year!

Friday I presented my game, the Armor of God, in the guild competition. It went pretty smoothly. There were 2 groups of 5 judges (from places like FRED Distribution, Out of the Box Games, and Games Unplugged), so the game was played twice. Then the judges rated the game following Mike Compton's Evaluation Form (find it on baordgamegeek here). A total of 8 games were entered into the competition. I'm not sure what place I ended up taking, but it wasn't in the top 4. Not really a big deal though. I mean, I didn't really expect to win. There are a whole lot of great games that the members of the guild design. It was just great to be a part of it and I can't wait to get the feedback from the judges. I'm sure it will help me improve the game a lot.

There were a few highlights of the weekend that I wanted to touch on. After the judging on Friday, Carey from FRED Distribution approached me and asked about taking a copy of the prototype to Armor of God home. In other words, he's interested and thinks it's a pretty good game! No guarantees that they will publish it, but success!!! Part of the purpose of the competition was to get publishers to see the games from the guild and hopefully get them interested in the games we had to offer. Carey was also interested in Mike Compton's game Bandits of Persia! It's exciting to see that publishers have an interest in games designed by guild members!

Also on Friday, Seth picked up the finished painting that Scott has been working on for Hagoth!!! Here it is!!!

He brought it to the Gathering. We both had prototypes of the game as well and we got about 10 people to demo it during the weekend. Ryan from The Board Game Guy was very excited! We're getting closer and closer to being ready for production!!

Lastly, I wanted to add that there was a lot of free stuff given away by all the publishers and game stores on hand. On Friday I won a brand new copy of Dominion Intrigue!!! I ended up playing it 3 times that evening (I even won the first of the 3 games, which was pretty big because I don't thing I won anything else during the 2 days). It's a great game!

All in all, I just loved the convention. I got to meet new people (another guy from here in Logan, now we'll have 4 of us here that design games). I got to play a lot of games. And I found someone interested in another one of my designs. Really, what more could I ask for from 2 days?

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.

Busy Summer

Things have been pretty busy lately. I was looking forward to summer as I thought it would be a little more relaxed and give me more time to work on my games and whatnot. Anyway, I just defended my thesis! So now I have to wait for the secretary to read through it, make the changes, wait for the grad school to read through it, make the changes, and then pay fees, get it bound, etc. Hopefully by the end of August I'll officially be a MASTER! Plus I'm trying to get going on the dissertation proposal, so that's keeping me busy.

I recently got the Armor of God printed by BluePanther. (I'll be posting a comparison between Guild of Blades, Artscow, and BluePanther here a few days.) I'm ready to take it down to SLC for A Gathering of Strangers. I'm really looking forward to that.

As I worked with Steve at BluePanther to get the cards printed he asked me about doing some artwork for his Nepal game! It was quite a surprise to me. I mean, I've been a little hesitant about my art abilities, but this gives me some added confidence that I do pretty good work. It has made me think more seriously about doing my own thing, publishing my games myself. I mean, having someone do the artwork is a big expense, but if I'm able to do it myself that would definitely cut back on costs. We'll see if I can get enough money together to really go out and do something like that. It would be great!!

The Game Design "class" (Game Design Concepts) started at the beginning of this week. It looks like it's going to be fun to follow along and hopefully contribute something. The problem will be trying to find enough time to participate in such a way that will allow for some contributions. There's a lot going on this summer!

On boardgamegeek a competition was posted for teams of 2 to design and produce a print n play cooperative game. Dane and I are going to design and submit to the competition. It will be a lot of fun to work with Dane, brainstorm, playtest, etc. as we move from idea to prototype to production. The brainstorming process has begun!

Lastly, we've had a little more discussion on the Korihor game that our Google Group (join us) is working on designing. This whole experience has been very educational and informative already. It's not easy working together on a game design, especially when it involves people from 5 states, many who have never met face to face, with so many different ideas and perspectives on what will make the game not only work but FUN! It's actually a lot of fun working on this project with the group. I hope that the end result will be a great game that we will figure out how to publish and offer as a ZGDI game!!! Then we'll put it up on our website as a great LDS/Mormon themed offering!

Anyway, quite a bit going on this summer! I guess it's good to keep busy.

Armor of God Resurrected!!!

Well, I've recently been working on the Armor of God. Originally it was a game for two players only. Phil at Covenant Communications said that two players games aren't likely to be accepted by them for publication. Plus the Guild is having a competition that will take place during A Gathering of Strangers this year (July 10 & 11)! So I started redesigning the Armor of God so that it would play with 2 to 4 players.

I was able to have it playtested on Tuesday the 9th at the Guild meeting. That was great! I didn't play. I just explained the game to the four who volunteered to play it. They enjoyed playing, said it was fun and that it kept them involved. They also had a lot of good feedback that I've gone through and incorporated into the design. I love having a group of people this close that are willing to play others games and help them improve them.

Also, I was searching around online for images that I might possibly use to at least have a decent looking prototype to take to the competition (so far it's just been 3" x 5" cards cut in half). I came across some awesome artwork! Tony, in Kaysville, designed some Armor of God cards for his young men and young women. I contacted him and he gave me permission to use his artwork in my prototype!!

Here are 2 of the cards that I put together using his stuff. I'm no artist, but having Tony's artwork definitely made these (hopefully I haven't detracted too much from his stuff)! Thank you Tony!!



I just finished sending my files to Steve at BluePanther yesterday. He's going to print the cards for me. That way I'll have a hopefully really nice looking prototype.

At A Gathering of Strangers a set of judges will play all of the entries in the competition and they'll choose a winner! The judges come from the world of publishing, and elsewhere. There are no guarantees that anyone, not even the winner, will get their game published, but it's never bad to have those in the industry look at your game.

Hagoth!!!

This is very exciting news (at least for me anyway)! Hagoth: Builder of Ships will be published by Mayday Games (updated 5/27/09: Pre-order Hagoth!!)sometime this summer!!! Sweet!

On May 9th the Guild had put together a meeting with Seth from Mayday Games, where we could come and show Seth our games. Four of us showed up to show him what we had. All together we spent 4 hours or so playing each game. Seth said that he liked the games and that he might look into doing a couple of them.

Later he told me that he wanted to do Hagoth. I was very excited (and still am)! I really had no idea that anyone out there would be interested in publishing a Mormon themed game. I always hoped that there would be someone or that somehow we could convince someone that they wanted to. But now it is actually going to happen!!

Anyway, Seth emailed me a contract on the 11th. I looked it over; asked about a couple of changes (like getting my name placed on the cover of the box); signed it and email it back on the 13th. Then yesterday Seth came up here to Logan with his signature now attached to the contract as well. So, it's official!!!

While he was up here we met with Scott Wakefield (an artist I know; here's his website). Scott is going to do the artwork for Hagoth!! I'll post some updates as Scott moves along with the artwork. Very exciting!!!

Well, that's how it's all happened. I can't wait to see the final, finish, published version of Hagoth. Seth is hoping that we can get the whole thing put together and take a couple of copies to A Gathering of Strangers in July. I don't know if that is feasible, but it would definitely be extremely cool!

New Game & the Satisfaction that's Come from It

I have been working on a children's game, aimed at 5 year olds and up. It's a cooperative game where the players are working toward completely building a temple. It's turned out to be pretty basic, but I think that's important because younger children will be playing it. Anyway, they roll dice and collect "resources" that are then used to "build" parts of a temple. Once they have all the parts they can put them all together and voila! a TEMPLE!!

I got a good prototype put together and Sunday morning before church (we go at 11:00 am) my kids played through it once. My three oldest played (a 7 year old, 5 year old, and 4 year old). The four year old had a hard time understanding that the three of them were playing together on a team. He liked collecting the pennies (which represent tithing) and always commented about how he had more than his sisters. The older two grasped the whole idea and could play through quite easily. They, in fact, helped the four year old several times with his rolls and whatnot.

The best part of the whole thing was that they were totally enjoying themselves! They played for about 30 minutes and were loving their time together. They were working toward a common goal and no one (well our four year old got a little distracted a few times) complained about playing or got tired of it and moved on to something else. It was very satisfying to hear them working together and having a good time playing a game that they could play together without much supervision from my wife and I (we were working on getting the other two ready). All I can say is that it was very satisfying. I was very happy, and still am.

Zion Game Designers International

We are moving forward on this idea: Zion Game Designers Internationl (ZGDI). Thanks to Chester we've got a nice looking shield logo and a nice introduction to who we are and what we hope to accomplish. Brian, who has some web designing experience, has put this all together here. So far there are 6 of us who are serious about carrying this thing forward (hopefully soon we'll have a members page there at zionboardgames. We hope to use the website to showcase the games we have as well (this will be added in the near future as well).

We hope that this will provide a great resource for publishers and distributors to be able to contact us and see what we have to offer. We're still working on figuring out how to become members of the LDS Booksellers Association and get to their annual convention. Hopefully ZGDI will be able to grow and give us that opportunity. In order to become members of their association we need to have 3 references that will verify that we have "active accounts" with them. We also need a business license. So, the ZGDI will have to become a business.

Some have talked about getting the LDSBA to open up a sort of third category for us (currently they work with retailers and wholesalers). That seems like a something that would be a little more difficult, but I guess we never know.

Anyway, we've got some hurdles to overcome but we're working at it and hopefully we'll see some success.

We've Got a Plan

So we've had quite a bit of activity on the Google Group lately. It was pretty much started when Chester (boardgamegeek profile) found us and joined in. He is very fired up and excited about getting something like this (i.e., Mormon themed games) out for publishers and distributors to see and pick up. We talked on the phone last night for a little over an hour about the idea. It goes something like this:

A Co-op will be created (we'll call it something like Zion Game Designers International (ZGDI)). We will hook up with the LDS Booksellers Association (become a member) and start attending their annual convention (happens in August; we'll be shooting for the convention in 2010). At the conventions we will have a booth where members of ZGDI will display their games. Members will bring games that are 'Ready for the Box.' If it isn't ready to be sold, then that is just what it is - not ready to be sold. Those at the LDSBA are there to make plans for the entire next year - decisions will be made on what goes into what store and what publisher will buy what game. Prototypes don't need to be professional in appearance, but they need to be functional and the game needs to have all the bugs worked out and read to be sold. That's another part of where we come in as a group, we'll be vetting games and helping get them ready for the LDSBA. This will give us access to the publishers and distributors in the LDS world of books, and we hope to get them to adopt new game designs as well.

He explained it to be sort of like an Essen-type setup: a convention where designers come with hopes of hooking up with a publisher. We'll be there for publishers and distributors to see us and our games. The Co-op will give us a chance to save on costs (all costs split by those of us who are members of the Co-op) and also provide us a way of letting the publishers and distributors know that we will always have quality products for them to consider. In essence, as a Co-op we would put our "stamp of approval" on the games that the members bring to the LDSBA conventions.

We also hope to be able to showcase our games at the Gathering of Strangers (that will hopefully happen this summer here in Utah). We hope to be able to go there with some games ready for others to play. Then we can get LDS people's feedback on the games and have that for 'market research' to back up our pitches to the LDSBA.

Anyway, it's a lot to take in. It makes me very excited though. I hope we can get this all set up and ready to go. I'm especially excited that someone other than me is excited to give quality Mormon themed games to the world!

Thanks to Chester for this brilliant idea!!

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.

New Game, Group, & Hagoth

So, I've had a short lull here on the blog. I mean, it's been almost 2 whole weeks since I've posted anything. But that doesn't mean that I haven't been working away (as much as I can with a large family and grad school and whatnot).

I've started working on a new game. I don't have a name for it yet. But I think it will have a much better chance of being picked up by Covenant. The game focuses on people, places, and things from the Book of Mormon (the NOUNS if you will found in the Book of Mormon). It's a sort of party game as it is designed for a bigger group. I would say, right now anyway, not having played it a whole lot, that "the more the merrier." Anyway, players attempt to create "statements" that are truthful, based on the stories found in the Book of Mormon. This is done using cards. For example, Nephi went to the Promised Land on a Ship (the italicized words are cards). Anyway, then there ar cards that change what the players do on each round (I call them "Rules of the Round" cards). For example, Draw 1 card & Play 1 card or Take 1 card from the player of your choice. Each card is worth a certain number of points (scored once the player has completed a statement) and the game is played until one player reaches a predetermined number of points. It needs some work (as most of my games do) and a name.

I've made some changes to the group. I had it set up as completely public, but it is now only open to members (request for membership is available). And, I uploaded my rulebook for Hagoth: Builder of Ships. I hope to make the rulebooks just pages in the group where everyone can see them and edit them. That will hopefully make things even more collaborative and give everyone a chance to get in on the action and contribute in anyway they can or decide to contribute.

That's all for now. Anyone out there who would like to join in, we would love to have you. Just let us know!