We Three Kings design notes

Okay, so the idea for We Three Kings started about maybe four years ago. The idea basically hasn't changed since then. You were on a randomized hexagonal board that when you got to a tile you'd flip it, although my original version didn't have tile bonuses. You would buy and sell gifts, and there would be six, not just three. The Star Path idea was the same. The idea of not getting points unless you donate to charity was the same, but in the original version there were no Charity cards, everything was just printed on the tile. I realized that for variety's sake that wasn't feasible and so switched to the whole Donation Request card idea. That original idea still shines through on the two give-to-other-players tiles.

In the original idea, the Christ child would be discovered as soon as the very last tile was flipped over. I play tested that my very first time, then realized that I didn't want the game to end four rounds into the game, so came up with a new end game condition. Inspiration hit me about it being a certain number of blessings a player got, which I first thought 20, then 10. Then I play tested it. And made it 6.

The original idea had the Christ child being found on the tile that fell mathematically on the star path where it first crossed itself twice, but then that was dumb so I made the whole roll a die twice thing, which I think is really fun because you can still use probability to figure out the most likely tile it will be, but it's still unknown until the very end. The idea for the Prediction board was new. At first it was only used for getting points at the end, but then the Shepard spots were just lame, so I came up with the idea for the bonuses you get.

Originally the middle space action would allow you to rotate tiles to change the star path, but in my playtests no-one ever used it, plus it would have been super lame to know the probability of the star path and make super awesome predictions only to have it changed on you. So I decided it would be more fun to have it not change, and that as soon as a tile was laid down the star path wouldn't ever change.

The idea for movement changed before the very first playtest. My original idea was that your piece faced a specific direction on the tile, one of the six, and that when you moved you would have to rotate your piece to face a different side before moving it forward. And your cards would be like, 6 and 7 and stuff. But looking at the size of the board, I decided that that was dumb and instead of having you face a certain direction, I would just do you could move to any surrounding tile.

And your hand would consist of the Rest card as well as a 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, and 3, which then changed to just a 1, 2, and 3. The star path card was created to make the star path more important than just this weird end-game thing. And it worked. Suddenly the direction and path of the star path became a lot more important than just this thing that happened once at the end of the game. The star path became an integral part of the movement and play experience.

The idea for different types fo blessings, small, mediums and large, was in the original idea for the game. I'm not sure where the idea came from that it would be unknown how much you'd exactly get, like 1 or 2 points for the small blessings, 2 or 3 for the next, and 3 or 4 for the biggest. It kept things tight and tense to the end, not really knowing how much your opponents really had.

The end game was hard to figure out. Like, really hard. Then one day inspiration hit and I realized I was thinking of it wrong. See, what I had originally had was that when a player got 6 blessings, then every player would have one more turn, and then you would roll the die twice, find out where the Christ child was, and then all tiles would lose their actions, and the only thing left to do was go and visit the Christ child. I tried that once, and. . . it didn't work. Everyone just used their one extra turn to play their Rest card, then went straight to the tile as soon as it was revealed. I still had the idea of having the first one to get there gets more points than later ones to get there, but with that idea it was just, the first player to go would get the most points.

I knew that there had to be a reason to maybe not get there as soon as possible. But what? Then the idea hit me to have the Christ child's location revealed as soon as the 6th blessing was gotten, and to have the tiles keep their actions. Also, players would get a bonus point for every two gifts they had, plus another bonus point if one of their gifts was the one they started with. And giving them three turns allowed them time to quickly nab that last Donation Request card they needed to fulfill, which was a more fun alternative than "oops, I know you were just one turn away from getting 3 or 4 points but I just ended it sorry haha." And when it comes to game design the golden rule is this: Do whatever is the most fun. And the three turn limit still made getting there the fastest still matter, like you couldn't just say, "oh you got there, well now I'm going to take 12 turns and get three more blessings haha."

On the Prediction board, I used to have it that the first player to get the correct spot would get 4 points, the second player to guess it would get 3, and so on. Playtesting it, no one would go on the same spot because they all wanted that one extra point. I changed it so that the correct prediction would get 2 points no matter when you guessed it, and it was a lot better, because now all you worried about was the probability of a spot being the right one, which I think is really fun, and the bonus it gives you, which I also think is really fun. You no longer had to worry about getting to a spot first. So that worked out alright.

The tile bonuses. At first, the only reason the bonus was there was for you to get it when you flipped it over. That was it. No, actually, they were also usefully because I did have the rule that if you were on a pot and someone else came to that tile you would get the tile's bonus, making it so you wanted to go to tiles others would go to their next turn. Kept up the player interaction. Playtesting it, I realized that it was tough getting gifts if they only came from, like, three spots, and tried it out having it so that players could get the bonus instead of the action by paying a coin. And that turned out to be a lot more fun, and kept the options open more, so I kept it.

Player special powers. I don't think they were a part of my original thinking of it, but came about when I was making player boards. It was originally a way to make more use of the bonuses. A mentioned, at first they had like no purpose, so I made a player power that said he could get the bonus instead of the action. When I changed the rule so that you could pay a coin to get the bonus, it was a simple fix to just say he got the bonus for free.

Other player powers I came up with were: draw two Donation Request cards and pick one, which was too weak in play testing so I change to to three cards; have an extra star path card, which I also added having an extra two precision chips to it; having a hand limit size of 5 Donation Request cards instead of 3, which I had always coupled with using the center tile as a Charity spot, which is actually pretty useful is some situations; starting with an increasing holding capacity, which sounds like a stupid power until you play with him and realize it's awesome; and the impossible to get right power involving the Traders, which had three or four different iterations to try to get correct until the one you see now.

The Inn card idea used to be just the "Mary" spot, and "Joseph" was going to be another spot, but I couldn't figure that out so I just made it the "Mary and Joseph" spot until I realized that that made no sense thematically at all, so I changed it to the "Inn" spot. Shepard spots were always shepherds, I thought it fit in thematically that you would get points for making a right prediction because that meant you correctly helped some shepherds so you got blessed for that. Not sure how getting a bonus for choosing a particular spot ties in thematically, though.

Other things? You're probably bored reading this blog post and don't really care, but I like writing about how the game slowly came to be. Wow, I just looked and this is a long blog post. Maybe I'll add pictures in it to break things up.

Oh, yeah, the starting number of coins was toyed with a bit. It was 8, but then I tested it and no on ever needed the extra storage space, so I changed it to 6. Still the extra coin storage space isn't as good as the extra gift storage space, even after changing the Trader's action from 'you can only sell one gift' to 'you can sell as many gifts as you want.' I made up for that a bit when I had the Inn card give you 2 points for all coin storages, but the one for all gift storages only gives you 1 point.

The Traders used to give you less money (1, 2, 3, and 4; which is now 2, 3, 4, and 5) and you used to have to spend more money to get gifts (2, 3, and 4 instead of the 1, 2, and 3). I changed those through play testing to make the game more fun (golden rule of game design).

The prices for the three Camel movement upgrades changed around a ton of times. As did the way the Rest to Rest-and-star-path power worked. It was took powerful, then too weak, then too powerful, until I wrestled it down to it only gave you the star-path movement if it was your last or second to last card in your hand. It was still not optional, until I play tested that and it wasn't fun at all, and in sticking to the golden rule I did what was more fun and had you moving along the star path optional.

The idea of having three tiles never used per game stayed the same, and allowed me to have some free space for ideas, giving me three more tiles to squeeze ideas into. In the end, it also creates a variable play experience, when you're never really sure which tiles won't be making an appearance this game. I also changed the frequency of tiles based on how useful they were. I only had two expand-storage-space tiles and three camel-upgrade tiles until I realized that storage space was better than camel upgrades, so changed it to 2 camel upgrades and 3 storage expansion tiles. The camel upgrades were 2 per tile, with 3 tiles, making the upgrades different per tile, but by making it 2 tiles I had to put all three options on each tile.

Anyway, I'm sure you're done with me talking about this, so I'm going to end my post here. Anyway, long story short, is making a game is lot of hard work. If you do end up playing it, let me know what you think.

done and almost done

The reason I've been so super behind on everything these last three to four weeks is because I've spent every spare waking second into a project which I just now completed.

What is this project? It's a surprise.

But I'm mailing it home, so if you're at my parents place you should be getting a package soon (hopefully before Christmas because the project is Christmas themed!) and you can find out then. I'll probably post more about it after the break.

But yea, that project sucked up all of my time and energy, and admittedly I probably should have spent a little bit more time doing other productive things, but it is what it is.

In other news, I'm now completely caught up with all the grading, and just have to grade now the tests they took yesterday. So, yea! And I'm done reading TTDECBA, so yea!

So I've been finishing a lot of things I was behind on, and that's good.

Almost done with school. Tuesday is the last day, and then Wednesday Heather and my offspring are flying to Mesa for Christmas and I'm driving there. This is because (1) it saves on having to pay, like, $20 per bag, when I can just drive them and the size and weight of the bags don't matter, and (2) my school starts a week before BYU next year so Heather is going to spend an extra week in Mesa with Henry and Joy and I'll simply just drive back so I can start school, and they'll fly in about a week later.

Now I just have to mail off this package....

Oathbringer, Christmas coming up, behind on everything

Heather's sister Heidi is in town until the 7th this week to help out.

Oathbringer. So how do the Kindle Fires my family has work? Because I had assumed they were all connected somehow, like if one person purchased a book the other Kindles could access it too? But Eric said he got Calvin on his and I didn't get access to it; took me over a year to get it from the library to read. So if somebody bought Oathbringer as a Kindle Fire book, could I get access to it to read it? And if so, how?

Christmas is coming up pretty soon. Again. It seems like the years just slide on by faster and faster. It's actually pretty scary. I think it has to do with each year being a smaller percentage of one's life, like how to a one year old, one more year is half their life, whereas to a 27 year old, one more year is simply just a twenty-eighth of his life.

Another year gone and still no game published. Although this year I did get pretty close with Somerset. I'm still working on games in my spare time. Not that I have any spare time any more. But you know what they say about hobbies: a hobby isn't something you do in your spare time, a hobby is something you make time for.

I'm behind in grading papers and tests for my 7th graders. That and I'm behind in reading Things That Don't Even Come Back Around; we only just met the tooth fairy where I'm at in reading. And I'm behind in, pretty much everything else. It's like I have all this stuff I have to do but can only do one thing at a time. Thankfully Heidi is here and she helped fold the laundry I did a few days ago and piled up on the couch, and I washed the dishes in half the sink, so that's something.

Joy mostly just eats and sleeps and poops. Which Im fine with, because she's so cute and adorable. I would put up more pictures, but my normal computer with the card slot is still mia.

Been listening to MoTab Christmas music yesterday and today. Trying to get into the holiday spirit, but it's hard when you're so stressed.

Thanksgiving with Joy

Joy has been taking up most of my life these last one and a half weeks. With my computer not able to accept a memory card, all the adorable pictures and videos will just have to wait until I have a computer that has a memory card slot in its side so that I can put them on. 

Oh yeah, last week was Thanksgiving break, huh. For our Thanksgiving dinner I just made it and we set up our card table in our living room and just had dinner together, the four of us. I made a chicken (bought a rotisserie chicken), mashed potatoes (boiled potatoes I mashed up), stuffing (from a box, add water and butter), pumpkin pie (pre-bought), and olives (hand picked, jk from a can).

I'm going back in to school tomorrow. Probably going to drive to transport al the games I need for my Winterim Game Design class there. 

For all those who have ever had a story idea, like me, and can't quite seem to put it down on paper, like me (or Alex):

Anyway, that's all. I just wanted to put up a quick blog post.

Joy

Joy Elise Perazzo was born November 15, 2017 at 6:16 pm in the Timpanogos hospital. She was 21" and weighed 9 pounds 14 ounces.

No baby yet...

Well, there isn't any baby sister yet... Heather's sister Stacey is in town to help with the birth. Hopefully the baby comes soon before she has to leave on Wednesday morning.

We're still picking the name as well. Last time with Henry we thought we knew what we would call him all the way up until a few weeks before, and decided to wait to see what he'd look like before finalizing it. Turns out, he looked more like a Henry than a the other name we were thinking of. We've narrowed it down to two names now and we'll see what she looks like when she's born.

My fitbit broke. Like, in two pieces broke. So I guess I won't be winning any more? It's just to give everyone else a fair chance because I was kicking trash.

NaNoWriMo is going on right now. I have an idea for a story that I've already started writing but I'm so busy with everything else I don't think I'll be writing it this November. It's about a guy who gains the ability to Temport things, which a completely new super power that's never been done before. It's the ability to move (suffix "port") forward in the time stream (prefix " temp"). So if he's done eating a meal he just temports it instead of putting it in the fridge. And later when he's hungry he just temports it back into the time stream and no time would have passed for the food because it wasn't in the time stream so he wouldn't have to heat it up or anything, it'd be exactly as it was.

Eric's Things that Don't Even Come Back Around is really good. Check it out.

Working on A Thousand Faces and it's going really well. Soon enough all three stages will be done and I'll make a playable prototype.

Speaking of games, Winterim is upon us again! Last Friday the students got access to the Winterim catalogue and my Game Design class is in it. About a month ago the administration asked us for our Winterim classes and I gave them the information for both my Game Design class as well as the Psychology and Science class I did last year. Only now it's called Psychology, Philosophy, and Science because I couldn't stop talking about philosophy last year, so this year I just added it into my description. 

Anyway, Game Design class. Or, the best class ever. During my prep on Friday I spent it printing out color posters advertising my Game Design class and posting them all over all three levels of our school. 25 copies, to be exact. Because the Winterim catalogue came out to the students about four hours after that, I am the only teacher to actively advertise their class so far. I've always wanted two sections of it (out of three) but never got more than just one really full section. This year will hopefully break the mold. Hopefully I'll get two sections this year.

As well as A Thousand Faces there are a couple few other games that I'm currently working on as well, including the reimplementation of my Lost the board game I made forever ago and which was really fun.

Anyway, hopefully this will be the last post that I'm daughterless.

Viticulture and Legacy games

Viticulture is one of the best games ever. If it weren't for the fact that Dominion is my favorite game ever, Viticulture would probably be number one. (Speaking of which, I need to update my Favorite Games list, mine only has three, whereas Alex's has over 50). I don't even know what it is about Viticulture that is so awesome to me. I've been thinking about it, and I guess I really really like worker placement games. Viticulture, Caverna, Village, TZolkin, I don't know, there's something about them that I just really like. With Viticulture there's also the fact that every year your wines age and your crushed grapes in your vats age, and I really like that for some reason. I like being able to construct different buildings that give you certain stuff, but some of them seem to be essential, like you have to get them every game or else you'll lose, like the extensions for your wine storage. Others are just super important but you don't have to have them if you have the right cards, such as the buildings that allow you to plant certain types of grapes in your vineyards. One game I totally got around that by playing a visiter card that allowed me to plant without needing the required buildings. That's another thing: the visitor cards are so rich and varied, and the game automatically gives you one every year, so you don't even have to go out of your way to get one. Although once again there is a building you can buy that will get you two.

Stuff from the Tuscany expansion, I guess, that I love: the mamas and papas at the beginning are super cool. The fact that you can sell some of your starting three fields is really neat, and a lot of visitor cards are from that expansion too I think. Alex said that we didn't need Tuscany because all of the good stuff was already put into the essential edition of Viticulture, and after watching reviews I can see what he means. While some people may think the separation of Summer and Winter worker placement is cool, to me it's just alright, and in Tuscany they even have spots for Spring and Fall workers, which once again I don't think really make the game. And there's an option to make cheese? Which the reviewers were just like, what? Why did you add this to a game about making wine? You're just taking away from its simplicity and goodness. So yeah, I guess we don't need the Tuscany expansion.

So, yeah, Viticulture. Love that game. I've also been thinking a lot about recently, ever since Alex's post about Pandemic Legacy, is legacy games. I've only ever played one, SeaFall, which was awesome, but it apparently is the worst legacy game out there according to some reviewers? Well if that's the worst dude, and I loved it, I can't wait to see what the heck other legacy games are like. And Pandemic Legacy is supposed to be just as good as the first, which is super hard to pull off. (The sequel to anything is hard to pull off.) But they do recommend playing the first one before playing the second one because there are minor spoilers to the first one in the second one. But man, I have no one to play with.

See, that's the main problem. I'd absolutely love to play all these legacy games with people, but with who? Eric and Ryan live at BYU-I, and Alex is still back in Fallon fighting back adulthood as long as he can, and the only time we've had to play a legacy game was during the two week Christmas break. The closet so far since then is Jacob and Brandon suggesting we start a game of Risk Legacy, but once again, when are we going to have time to play it? Getting together once a month? It's super hard for all us of since we all have kids (well, I have kid, soon to be kids) and they are young and need our time and attention and it's really hard to go out and do anything like a legacy game for us. Maybe I'll talk to some fellow teachers and see if they want to do something after school? Besides, you know, work?

Even if I did have a group to play with and a time to play, the next question is: which Legacy game? Jacob suggested Risk Legacy, so if it with that group we could do that, and Alex suggested Pandemic Legacy Season 1, so if it was with that group we could do that. I've already played SeaFall. It's suggested that I play season 1 before I play Pandemic Legacy Season 2. There's a legacy game coming out soon (like, it's already come out? or it will very soon? one of those) called Charterstone, and get this: Charterstone is created by the exact same guy that created, wait for it, Viticulture. The same designer of one of my favorite games created a worker placement legacy game. So that one is definitely on my radar. So which would I play if given the option to play any legacy game I wanted? Well, once again, it would depend on who I played with, but my first pick would be Pandemic Legacy Season 1, followed by Charterstone, followed by Pandemic Legacy Season 2, followed by Risk Legacy. If playing with Alex and Eric, who have already played Season 1, it's a toss up between Season 1 and Charterstone, because they already know everything that happens in Season 1, and Charterstone would be a fresh experience. But, of course, all of this is only hypothetical at this point.

Trip to Wyoming, new How to Play video, school

This last Thursday I took a little trip up to Wyoming. Why? Good question. Let's go back a bit.

I had work off this last week. It was October break for everyone at my school, and so I was at home all week cleaning and getting ready for the baby. I'm taking an online Master's program through Grand Canyon University. Each of my ten classes is six weeks long. I have to post every Saturday and Monday, and every Wednesday is a big project due. Heather suggested I look at those early, so that I wouldn't procrastinate. So on Tuesday I get on and look at all the future assignments I have to do. It turns out that for some of them I needed to have observation hours. Usually when I needed these I just used my school because I could go during my prep, which is what I did the last time I needed some of those, including interviews. Well, it turns out that this time it needed to be in a Title 1 school (which mine is not) with ELL (English Language Learners) (which my school does not have). So I would need to go to a different school and observe.

Wednesday comes around and I think to myself, I have this week off. This would be a perfect opportunity to get in those observation hours while I don't have to go into work. So I start looking at some Title 1 schools around that I can go to. Um, so the thing is, is that they all decided to have a short little Fall break. That Thursday and Friday. Every single school district (with the exception of one down in Saint George) in all of Utah was not going to have school that Thursday or Friday. And I'm just like, What the heck!?! Here I am, getting all prepared to actually be proactive in my education and get these observation hours done a month in advance, but because I was a day late it all  doesn't matter!? If I was a day more prepared I could have observed on Wednesday, but that's too late and I was planning on Thursday and Friday but now all the schools are going to be closed!? Anyway, I was frustrated and upset that even though I had looked up my assignments way before and had the week to do them so that I wouldn't have to take work off to do my observation hours, it didn't even matter.

That's when my good darling wife Heather helped me out and found me a Title 1 school with ELL that wasn't closed Thursday. The reason? Because it wasn't in Utah. It was in Wyoming. The corner of Wyoming that sits in the little seat that Utah makes in its upper-right corner. here, I'll just put in  picture:

I called the school and barely managed to talk to someone (because it was at 4:00 which is when everyone leaves) and they said I could come in the next day for observation hours. It was an hour and 44 minute drive, but the next morning I got up early and drove there while it was still dark. I needed nine hours, and only had seven, but thankfully there was two hours of stuff going on that night with the ELL teacher that I stuck around for to get my nine hours. I left home around 6:30 in the morning and got home around 9:00 at night. And that's my story about going to Wyoming. I think that's the first time I've ever been to that state.

In other news, it took me about three days to do, but I finished my newest How to Play video. It didn't take me three days in the sense that it took me 72 hours, it took me three days in the sense that I started on Thursday and finished on Saturday night, with various hours and times each day writing the script and filming and editing and what-not. Anyway, for my Game Design Winterim class I made a whole bunch of videos on how to play the games so that the students could watch them and learn how to play them so that the first two days of class we could just play those and they would all know how to play. This year I think I'm going to replace some of the old games with new ones, one of the new ones being Kingdomino, the winner of the Spiel des Jahres 2017. 

So, school. More specifically, work, APA, American Preparatory Academy. So in my last blog post I mentioned how the building had about three inspections it had to pass? Well, it didn't pass one of them, so we're not going to be teaching in the new building on Monday like we had hoped. The good news is though, I got an e-mail Friday saying the building was finished and it had afterwards passed the inspection, so this upcoming week we're going to be moving stuff to the new building, it's just that classes won't be starting there until the following Monday, October 30, the day before Halloween.

APA is a uniform school, and costumes are not allowed. Both years I've taught there I've gotten away with a tiny costume. For example, my first year all the students said I looked like Linguini from Disney Pixar's Ratatouille, so that year I put a little toy rat on my shoulder like Remy. The next year I wore a baseball cap and I was a sports fan or something, I can't really remember. This year I don't know what I'm going to do. Something small so I won't get in trouble (fingers crossed) but something so that everyone will know it's for Halloween. We have a big creepy toy spider, maybe I'll put that in my hair.

You know what's in five days from the day I post this? Stranger Things season 2 comes out. That's right.

Next week off from school, baby coming soon

This next week I have off from school. Yay! Which means I will be taking time to clean the apartment and getting it ready for the new baby who is due November 10. Also, if you remember the situation with the new school not being ready for us to teach in, and me having to teach in the gym, well the new school is set to be finished this week. Then they will have four inspections, and the plan is to be ready to go by the Monday after the break. We'll see how that turns out. I had really high hopes, up until during an after school meeting with all the teachers when the administrators had a guy come in to encourage us that it would be done on time. After his talk I felt way less optimistic that it would be done. That's called irony: when an event occurs opposite of what you would expect. They expected it to make us more optimistic but instead it made me less optimistic. Dude, I don't know what we'll do if it's not ready by then.

Played my new game Dice Forge at clubs night a few weeks ago and with Heather twice yesterday. I won at clubs night by 5 points and Heather beat me once and I beat her once, by about 6 points and then about 20 points. It's a fun game.

Alex said he'd be interested in playing Pandemic Legacy with more of his brothers than just Eric, and I totally want to, but I have no idea when I'll be in Fallon next, much less for an extended period of time. This year was the year Heather, Henry and I would go to Fallon for Thanksgiving and Mesa for Christmas, but with the baby being born on November 10 we weren't planning on going anywhere for Thanksgiving.

The new baby is coming soon and Henry is very excited. He points at Heather's tummy and says, "Baby sister come out! Right now!" What a cute kid. He's going to be so good around her. Maybe a bit too friendly. We'll have to make sure he doesn't cuddle her too hard. Or try to feed her anything. Or anything like that.

Speaking of Henry, this last week Heather, Henry and I went to a farm place that had a corn maze and was selling pumpkins and had a whole bunch of fun stuff for families and kids. There was a little petting zoo area there that Henry loved, and we got a video. There was also this wide but short metal slide that you could go down into corn seed that Henry absolutely loved. When we got home he still had corn seed hiding in his clothes that we had to get out. I got a video of him playing with it later and singing to himself too.

So this next week I'll be cleaning up and getting the apartment ready for the baby, since I have the week off of work. My Grand Canyon University master's is going well. Hopefully my American Preparatory Academy building will be ready by next week. Speaking of my school, we're already getting ready for Winterim and we're sending in our Winterim proposals! I'm doing Game Design again obviously and I'm also going to offer the Psychology and Science one I did last year too, but now I'm calling it Psychology, Philosophy, and Science wince we talked a lot of philosophy last time, too. For a third class I was thinking about offering a Brandon Sanderson class, and we could talk about the Cosmere and create our own magic systems and the like. I might team up with another teacher who's actually good at writing to do that one though. We'll see.

My thoughts on October General Conference 2017

Okay, so in my opinion a lot of the talks given this general conference were given on one topic. It seemed to me that the majority of talks were about this one thing, but when I told Heather she didn't think that at all. So maybe it just seemed that way to me? Anyway, the theme I thought the majority of talks had was this: There are a ton of trials in this life, but with reliance on Christ He will support us through these trials. Anyone else get that same theme?

Elder Hales passed away after the Sunday morning session. He was prayed for in the opening prayer of the Priesthood session. I can't remember any other time when an apostle has passed away during a general conference.

Okay, I wish I had taken better notes in conference, because I could have sworn there were two entire talks just on trials and overcoming them, but I can't remember what they were or who gave them, and looking through Middle-aged Mormon Man's blog isn't jogging any memories, either. But I know for a fact that the mentioned the natural disasters and hurricanes a lot. And two talks talked about the eclipse. My conference word should have been eclipse. That would have been so cool.

Okay, boom, Sister President Jean Bingham's talk. Christ will help us through times of trial and difficulty. Was that the only talk? I could have sworn there was at least one more earlier. Maybe that's just the Spirit telling me what I need to hear? Didn't someone say in conference that just because we have fight that doesn't mean our problems will be solved; it just might mean that we are given strength to make it through the trial? Like the people of Alma. Someone talked about the people of Alma and that principle. Anyway, so maybe other people got different things out of conference. That's the main theme that I got out of it.

In other non-conference related news, after Priesthood on Saturday I went out and used a couple of gift cards, one of which being a Barnes and Noble gift card that I got over a year ago, to buy the game Dice Forge. Look forward to playing it.

Isle of Dogs, Horizons, Thousand Faces

So, I could have sworn my brother Eric posted something about this previously on his blog, but looking through it I can't find it. Anyway, Wes Anderson, the guy that did Fantastic Mr. Fox, is coming out with another movie which looks and feels much the same style. It is called Isle of Dogs, and they just came out with a new trailer the other day.

There was a Kickstarter game project that ended the other day. I didn't back it due to lack of money even though it looked really fun. Plus, I didn't need to back it because it had a free Print and Play that I have already printed out and made and played with myself a couple of times. Anyway, it was called Horizons and it's like this 4X style game only it plays in less than an hour instead of like 5 hours which is the amount of time 4X style games usually play. (4X stands for Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate, and is the type of game where you explore and build your own civilization and build cities and colonies and such).

Okay, so A Thousand Faces, (the game based on Hero with A Thousand Faces), it's getting closer to being done. Working on some card names and I still need to figure out the third part, Return, and how everything will fit together, and I'm thinking, what if I Kickstart this? And then I'm thinking, I looked it up and it turns out that Hero with A Thousand Faces I guess actually isn't in the public domain, it still has copyright? So I'll have to contact them if I want to Kickstart it? And work with a game company? Man, I don't know how this works.

Calvin

April 20th of last year, my brother Eric posted a blog post of the book Calvin, by Martine Leavitt. Ever since then I've wanted to read it, but haven't had a chance to. Until now. I checked it out from the public library, and read it in less than a day's time.

Oh man. Oh man. To say this book made me cry is an understatement. I was heaving sobs at the end of it. I can't even tell you why (spoilers) but everyone needs to stop whatever they're doing and go read it right now. That ending just hit me somehow. You know how the best literature and film and such stay with you long after you're done reading it? That's what Calvin is. I re-read the last 60 pages over again twice so far, and will probably do it some more times before I have to return it to the library.

Now, I've cried at the endings of books before. Or at least I'm pretty sure I have. Books with beautiful, poignant endings. I cried at the end of Ender's Game. I might have cried at the end of the Bartimaeus Trilogy, but even I didn't, I loved loved loved the ending to that trilogy. I cried at the end of The Subtle Knife. This last time I read Deathly Hallows, ah dude, Dobby's death just hit me like a load of bricks, I cried so hard. I cried at the end of Dashner's The Kill Order. I cried at the end of Watership Down. Basically I cry at the end of a lot of good books.

Speaking of Watership Down, I know for a fact there are two things which Eric started but never finished but I have finished and I know he'd really like if he finished them: Watership Down and Stranger Things. The first 10 minutes of the last episode of Stranger Things? Not the best television drama. In fact, it's kind of boring if you have no idea who the characters are or anything. First 10 minutes of the first episode of Stranger Things? The best 10 minutes of awesomeness ever that should get you hooked (okay, so statistically it isn't the first 10 minutes, it is the second episode, because according to a stat I read about the show, 96% of people who finished the second episode ended up finishing all 8 episodes).

Anyway, Calvin is an amazing book and even if you've never heard of Calvin and Hobbes in your life, it is still an amazing book. Yes, it has references to the comic, but like Eric said, it easily stands on its own two feet.

The Shipwreck Arcana

Trapped in a drowned world, you and your allies are doomed -- or are you? Using a mystical deck and a healthy dose of logic, you can predict each others' fates and escape unscathed.

And that is how we are introduced to Mesomorph's newest game, "The Shipwreck Arcana," a cooperative game of deduction and logic. It was on Kickstarter and I found it on Thursday. It seemed interesting, and I considered backing it, but wanted more time to think before I did anything. Unfortunately, I didn't have more time, due to the fact that by the time I found it it had 3 hours left in its campaign. 

Here's the thing with me and Kickstarter: I've only backed three projects, each for $5 or less. The first, "Steampunk Rally," I backed with $5 to get the print and play files, which I then printed off, cut out and formulated, and then gave to my mom for mother's day. The next, "Book of Mormon Heros: The Servant of Helaman," was a computer game created by a member of the church. By pledging $1, I was emailed a link to where I could download the game. I never did download it, come to think of it. Hold on a sec.     . . .     Okay I'm back. So the link I was given: bookofmormongames.com leads me to another page which has a whole bunch of other links to it, and I'm too lazy to try to search for it. Plus, right now it looks like one of those sites that could give you viruses. Anyway, it only cost a dollar and supported him, so all's good. The third project I backed, "Anachrony," was also a $5 pledge to get the print and play version. The difference between this and Steampunk Rally, however, was the fact that Anachrony is huge. Like, really big. Like, it's over 100 pages for just the base game, not including all the expansion stuff I also got. So I never did have the time or money to print it all off. But I still have the files.

So I have never really gotten a game through Kickstarter, just files to print off at home to make my own version. And I'm thinking, it's about time I got one. With Steampunk Rally and Anachrony, to actually get the game would have cost $55 and $59, respectfully. I just don't have that kind of money to spend on games. (Unfortunately. Maybe some day...) But with Shipwreck Arcana, not only did it seem like a really interesting game, it was also only $15 for the entire game, plus all unlocked stretch goals. I got a $25 gift card that I could use for whatever I wanted (read: games) so I decided to go for it. 

The Shipwreck Arcana is a real game about a fictional deck of cards. The deck exists in a world which is described only as "sunken" or "drowned." The world's history is unknown -- but it is hinted at by the fictional illustrator of the tarot deck, providing a glimpse of the history that surrounds it. The Shipwreck Arcana is a compact, cooperative game of deduction, evaluation, and logic, combining simple, speedy play with incredibly deep strategy. Players take turns playing tokens according to rules found on an ever-changing tableau of cards, in order to convey information to the rest of the group before their doom arrives. 2-5 players, 20 minutes, recommended ages 10+.

Although I was kind of rushed with my decision, I still think that it was a good one. In reality, I wasn't that rushed with my decision. I decided to support it, and gave the credit card information for my $25 gift card. A day later I got a notice telling me it was declined because it couldn't accept that kind of card, so I had a week to fix it or just drop out. So I had a week to really decide whether or not to get it, and in the end I decided that it would be a great enjoyable game.

Some reasons I backed it: (1) It is a short game. My favorite type of games are the ones where there's tons of different ways to score points and it's strategy driven and there are multiple paths to victory. For example: T'Zolkin: The Mayan Calendar. Great game, for those very reasons. Also, I'm really looking into a new game called Merlin that fits this exact style. My game Somerset was structured after these ideas. However, sometimes you just need a quick, light game. Timeline, for example. The Shipwreck Arcana lasts only about 20 minutes, and is a filler, which will be a nice breath of air after all the heavy strategy games.

(2) The game is like a series of difficult logic puzzles. You can read the rules and learn more about the game here, but basically every turn a person is using logic to get to to figure out what he has, and you are using logic to figure out what he has. With 30 cards that give a variety of different situations, and 49 (seven times seven) different tile sets you could be given to work the puzzle with, the variety of logic puzzles to solve is near endless.

(3) It supports adding and dropping out players super easily. Have you ever had a game where when you were in the middle of it someone came in and wanted to join, or somebody playing had to leave? This game allows that flexibility without messing up the flow of the game at all.

(4) It has a super quick set up time. One of the reasons why I love Splendor.

So all in all I'm excited for March 2018 to come, when I'll be getting my copy. Yes, in six months. That's about the amount of time it takes to get a game when you back it on Kickstarter after it has been successfully funded.

First week of school

So this last week was the first week of school. Wow. So this year I am teaching 7th grade English. Which is nice because it means i only need to prep one lesson per day instead of two lessons like I have had to on previous years when I taught an 8th grade class and a 9th grade class. So that's nice.

The backstory to this story is that American Preparatory Academy has several different campuses, all under the APA franchise, I guess you could call it. There's a West Valley 1 campus and a West Valley 2 campus and a Salem campus and a Las Vegas campus and a Draper 1 campus and a Draper 2 campus. Last year and the year before that I taught at Draper 2 (D2) campus, which had the first floor of elementary and the second floor of secondary (Jr. High and High School). The exciting news last year was that we were going to expand! We were getting a ton more students for both elementary and secondary, and creating a whole new huge building right next to the D2 building, which would be called Draper 3 (D3) and house only Jr. High and High School while the whole D2 building would convert into all elementary, second floor and all. So last year all of the secondary staff and I packed up all our classrooms and moved them into boxes into the cafeteria and the elementary people started moving their stuff into our classrooms.

And that's when the fire nation attacked.

The D3 building, it turned out, was actually not going to be ready to move into by the time school started. So we had a large increase of students to the elementary, completely filling the D2 building, and a huge influx of secondary, which was going to fill the huge D3 building. But now there was no D3 building.

The solution was to cancel school! No, I'm just joking. The solution was to split all the kids that were going to go to D3 into two groups: 7th and 8th grade, or Jr. High, and 9-12 grade, or High School. The Jr. High students would be put into the D2 building, and the High School students would be put into the APA offices and D1 building. Because all of our classrooms were already taken, we had to fit into every nook and cranny of the place. The gym has a divider that comes down to separate it into two, and so there's teachers teaching their classes in the gym. The band room can separate into three, so three classes are going on in the band room. The multipurpose room became a classroom. The P.E. students are doing everything outside. Instrument storage became a classroom. The cafeteria is not being used as a cafeteria; it's being used as a classroom. That's in the D2 building. I'm not sure exactly what the D1 is doing, but probably something similar.

Where am I teaching? My first four periods are in the west half of the gym. The students sit in the bleachers. They need their binders to act as their desks so they can write. The gym was supplied with a whiteboard on wheels, one for each gym half. I am only there for the first four periods, and then other teachers come in and teach in there. For 6 and 7 period, I teach in the middle band room. That room is crazy because five other teachers also teach in there, so finding place for everyone's everything has been kind of crazy. I managed to get some binder space and space for my turn in baskets. For eighth period I teach in the east half of the gym. Teaching in the gym in funny because there's a teacher on the other side teaching too and you can totally hear the each other and the other classes. One time when Mr. Waghorn, my English teaching buddy, was teaching on the other side and it got super quiet for both of our classes I yelled out loudly, "And that's when I beat the crap out of Mr. Waghorn!" And the other class just burst out laughing. I like 8th period because whereas my other classes have about 30 or more kids on the each, my eighth only has 16 students, so it's nice. And my 4th period only has 6 students, which is great too.

All in all though, it's not a nightmare like it sounds like. Sure, the first few days were absolute chaos, and added on top of that there was the total solar eclipse the first day of school so we added that into our schedule too, but things have now settled down into sort of a routine. I have a portable cart which I keep all of my supplies and such on so that I can take it from classroom to classroom. I have carved out a little nitch into the band room classroom and have mostly figured out classroom procedures without a classroom. It's actually kind of fun having these weird teaching conditions. It will make great stories later on, like "Remember the beginning of the school year when we had to teach in the gym? Good times, good times."

So all in all even though things are crazy I have a positive attitude about it. I'm not complaining. I'm glad I'm not like some teachers who teach both High School and Jr. High classes, because they literally have to drive from the one campus to the other. It takes about 5-10 minutes to drive. And their gas money is compensated by the school, so that's nice. I'm just glad I don't have to do it because I take the bus to school and so don't have a car at school to do that with. But I love teaching at APA. My favorite thing about it is that all the teachers are good friends with one another. There's this sense of community that binds us together. During trainings we sometimes go out to eat together and and we invite each other to parties and BBQs and stuff. So my one big fatty major complaint would be about this whole D1 D2 split situation is that I miss those other teachers. Greenwood, Brereton, Ochs, Hollinger, Goff, Pimentel, etc. It's like our community group of friends has been cut in half, and I never get to see any of them because they solely teach High School. That's my one complaint.

Anyway, that's my first week of school. Like I said, it makes for some good stories.

And now for something completely different:

I've had this question for a while of how they did the yellow line on TV in football, for the first down line, and low and behold, while "wasting" time on You Tube watching educational videos from VSauce, Vox, and Today I Found Out, I came across the answer to my question:

Deer Creek Reunion

Last weekend was our family reunion. Lots and lots of great-grandchildren running around. I really like the location (it was less than 45 minutes away from our house) so I think we should have it there every year instead of in California (a really long way away from our place). Plus, the cabins were so much nicer. But Camp Connery has so many nostalgic memories, you know? But on the other hand, most people that came to the reunion live in Utah anyway (pretty sure). But on the other hand, Connery was for a week and I'm not sure how long you can reserve River's Edge at Deer Park. But on the other hand, we old timers seem to now be outnumbered by those great-grandchildren, so they don't remember Connery at all. But on the other hand, tradition! Bum bum bum baaa tradition!

Hannah did a stellar job at making everyone shirts. Thanks Hannah!

Some random pictures that were taken with our camera:

3 videos

Family reunion coming up this upcoming weekend. I'm back doing pre-service training meeting for American Preparatory Academy this week and next, and then the week after that I'll do one week of Parks and Recreation again before going back to school on the 21st.

Besides that, there's really not else to talk about. Here's some videos.

Heather's birthday

Heather's 25th birthday was this last Friday. My Provo Parks and Rec job has Fridays off, so I didn't have work that day. In the morning I made Heather breakfast in bad: crepes with strawberries, bananas, honey, chocolate syrup, and nutella. Heather had a little party where we played watermelon volleyball and a fun game where each person got a random object and tried to come up with as many uses for it as possible. For example, I got a black comb, so I said things like fake musts, spigot strainer, and fence for little people. After the party Heather and I went out to Nickel City, where we played a lot of fun games and won tickets and got little prizes. The cake I made Heather for her birthday had pink frosting and I put the candles out to spell I ♡ U.

My mom and dad sent Heather a package for her birthday. Thanks guys!

It's newspaper! :D

The next day we went to the rodeo. It was Henry's first time going to a rodeo. WE had a lot of fun. There are a couple rodeos going on here for the 24th of July. I have the 24th off too, which means that Heather, Henry, and I can do even more fun stuff!