LTUE 2, mom/grandma's visit

Valentine's Day was a few Wednesdays ago. For it, Heather and I recreated our first date. Sort of. For starters, our first date was a picnic at Kawanis Park. But the tree we had it under had been torn down. In fact, that entire half of the park had been destroyed and recreated into some sort of water catcher thing in case it floods. So we couldn't have it in the same spot. Plus, it was raining out. So we tried to set up under a tree near our spot, but the rain was coming down. We decided to tough it out, and set out the blanket and food. Then it started hailing. At that point, we gave up and just went under one of the pavilions in the park. We picked the one we had our Provo reception-thing for our wedding, so there were still some memories associated with it. Then it really started pouring down hard so we were glad that we had taken shelter.

Olympics are going on! Heather and I watch them almost every single night together on NBC. Some of the events are super awesome to watch.

The Thursday, Friday, and Saturday before last were the Life, the Universe and Everything conference. This year I got my ticket early, and went to all three days (after work on Thursday and Friday). On Thursday I went to "The Art of Fun," which talked about game design and what makes games fun. Alan Bahr was on that panel. i sat in the front and after the panel he came up to me and said, "We have a meeting, right?" Yeah we did! He told me to meet him Saturday morning. After that I went and checked out the Good Move cafe in downtown Provo, and HOLY CRAP they have like every great game imaginable! I like, died and went to Heaven. my own personal Heaven is going to be like that place. They had an entire wall with large bookcases packed with games. I thought they'd only have Monolpoly, but they have, like, every awesome game ever. Dominion, Gloomhaven, Pandemic, Forbidden Island and Desert, Concordia, Great Western trail, Camel Cup, Codenames, Alhambra, Santorini, Steampunk Rally, Sushi Go!, Village, Settlers, Caverna, etc. etc etc. It was AMAZING! So naturally I have to go there sometime with some other gamers and have a blast. The next panel I went to was "Writing Your YA Novel," which Calista was also in. She was near the front. Then I went to "Bard for Life: Atomic theory" where a storyteller rocked some awesome stories and it was really fun.

Friday after work I made it to Board Game Recommendations, where Alan Bahr was on the panel. I was going to go to another panel but  got distracted at the gaming room where some people were playing Shipwreck Arcana. I have an entire post about this game, but basically it was a Kickstarter that I backed, and it came in finally a couple of weeks ago. Well, this guy obviously backed it too becasue he had it and was playing it. I jumped in (after showing I knew how to play I was invited to join) and it was really fun. Anyway, I played a couple of games of that and then headed off to "From Ragnarok to The Maze Runner: Apocalypse/Post-Apocalypse in Fiction" and that was cool. Last year I went to a dystopia apocalypse one. I guess I find it an interesting genre. I wet to a creating movie and book trailers one next, but they didn't talk about movie trailers at all, just book trailers, so that was the one class I regret not going to something else instead. Then I went to a class about psychology and game design, and then in the game room played some more Shipwreck Arcana.

On Saturday morning was my meeting with Alan Bahr, and I gave him a copy of Somerset (the copy I got from the Game Crafter). He said he'd play it and get back to me. And if it wasn't something he wanted to publish, he'd contact me with some other game manufacturers. Then I went to a class called "Avoiding the dreaded infodump," which talked about spreading out your world-building information into your plot so that your readers aren't bored. Calista was in that one too. Then I went home for a bit and when I came back I went to "Making the Most of NaNoWriMo," which stands for National Novel Writing Month, which is Novemembr, which is what Eric did when he wrote his "The Anachronominion." I got some good tips there if I ever decide to do it. I've thought about it before but have never just done it. I wasn't going to go to a class the next hour because none of them seemed interesting, until I noticed that Brandon Sanderson was on a panel for one, so I went to that one. The next class the one I was going to go to about games was talking about computer games, not board games, so I left that, but then my second and third choices were both full so I played Lanterns in the game room. Writing Battle Scenes was next, foolowed by a short stop at the LTUE Benefit Anthologies Preview where I grabbed some snacks, to Communications throughout history.

And that was the conference. The next week my mom came for a visit. She got to meet Joy for the first time! We hung out and talked the first day. The next day my mom and I played Shipwreck Arcana, and she liked it. Other games we played when she was here were Century Golem Edition, Cover Your A$$ets, and Becky came over and we all played TZolkin The Mayan Calandar, which Becky and I both won becasue we tied.

Also, when my mom and I went in to the BYU Bookstore to get some stuff, Brandon Sanderson was there signing books. So we got a book for Alex, Mistborn, and Brandon signed it, and I got to ask him a question. This is the first time in my life I've ever spoken with him. I've emailed and he emailed back, and I've sat in the back of one of his writing classes and, obviously, LTUE panels, but this was the first time I've ever spoken to him. Anyway, I asked him about the fact that traveling faster than light is equivalent to going backwards in time, and he acknowledged that (which is good, I was hoping he knew that) and said this was something he thought about a lot, and basically in the Cosmere he kind of (he used the word "fudges") the laws a bit using magic to prevent causality from being effected. So now we know: there is faster than light travel in the Cosmere, but some sort of magic prevents causality from becoming effected by it. Somebody should put that on the forums.

My mom left on Saturday, and made it safely home. That night Heather and I watched the Olympics, men's hockey final which Olympians from Russia (ie Russia) won, and then we watched the women's 30K skiing race, which took over an hour but somehow was more interesting than we originally thought it was going to be.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May

I wasn't able to post last eek or the one before for some reason becasue my computer was wigging out somehow. Anyway, so I'm posting this week. Yay!

Okay, so I'm almost done with this new game I made. I don't know what to call it yet, but it's similar to the style of Sushi Go!, Treasure Hunter, and 7 Wonders, that is, it's a card drafting game. In it you're building up a tiny kingdom. Craftsmen and workers allow you to take stone, while princesses let you build small castles and princes let you build large castles. The King and the Queen will let you build either a small or a big castle. Knights allow you to go on quests. Soldiers add to your army. Peasants do nothing, but certain cards can only be played if you have a certain number of peasants. Priests "covert" one of your neighbor's cards, stealing it from him that turn. Those are the basics.

The Life, the Universe, and Everything conference is coming up this weekend. I already got my ticket and it should be really good. I'm going to meet Alan Bahr again of course, but some of the workshops there look really good as well. And the week after that my mom is coming to visit for a week.

This week is Valentine's Day. Yesterday (Saturday) our ward had a Valentine's Day party. They had Mexican food and cobbler and we played Bunco (my parents met at a ward activity playing Bunco) and there was a dance afterward. We got a babysitter to watch Henry and Joy.

Speaking of Joy, she is so cute! Speaking of Joy being so cute, this computer has about zero free memory and so I can't download any pictures to show you and the screen on the other computer is broken and ahhh all I want to do is oput a picture up here, that shouldn't be too hard, should it?

I was hired on to be a math teacher/tutor! It's only four hours a week though, two or three on Monday and two or one on Wednesday. I'll either start this week or next. Hopefully next because this Wednesday is Valentine's Day.

My wife has been playing a lot of games with me recently and I love her so much for it. The games we've played the most of are Century: Golem Edition, and Alhambra. She's way good at Alhambra. We have yet to try out my new kingdom building game, but I'm still working out some bugs on that one.

Yesterday at the ward activity we sat next to Richard Leo. I looked familiar to him and he asked me what my last name was. When I told him Perazzo he asked if Eric was my brother. I said yes, and he told me that him and Ryan and Eric were roommates at BYU-I and that he was Ryan's home teaching companion. And now he's in my ward here. Crazy.

Ryan's visit with games

Ryan passed trough twice last week. He and his girlfriend were going down to help out her mom. He spent a couple nights here. When I asked him if anyone played the My Three kings game over Christmas, he said no. :(

While he was here, he, his girlfriend, Heather and I all played a new game I got for Christmas late: Century: Golem edition, with its play mat which is separate and extra. In it you play cards that can swap gems you ave for other gems, and you can then turn in gem sets for golems of different points. You start with just two cards but you can add cards to your hand throughout the course of the game, and which ones you get depends on your strategy. For example, one game I got a card that changed two blue gems into three green gems and two yellow gems, and then a card that turned two green gems into two blue gems. So if I play both on back to back turns I can essentially gain a green gem and two yellow gems via the two trades. And every game the hand you're going to be building for yourself is going to be different because the cards you can get are shuffled and come up in a random order. I like it. So did Ryan and so does Heather. Whenever I hear this game I am hearing it compared to Splendor, and I really love Splendor.

Ryan, Heather and I also played Dice Forge together when Ryan's girlfriend was at a friend's. We played two games and Heather won one and I won one. The second game we played used the more advanced cards and introduces more advanced die sides, which I haven't played with yet, so it was fun.

I other game related news, remember Alan Bahr? If not, here's a link to the post I talk about him: Link! Anyway, so the last I heard from Alan was July 28, 217, where he responded to my email about following up: "I'm not sure if you heard, but Stewart Wieck, founder and CEO of Nocturnal Media died at the end of June. Things are pretty up n the air due to his death (my job is ending and I've had to split my company off)." After that things just kind of died. I decided to contact him again in early January, and he got back to me saying that he wants to meet up with me soon to continue to talk. Since the Life, the Universe, and Everything conference (the conference I met him for the first time at) is coming up in February, we're going to meet up then.

Okay, so I was going to put some pictures up here, but for some reason this computer isn't letting me do that. So just pretend that this post also had pictures of everyone together and of Joy and such.

Andrew's thoughts and opinions on some deep Gospel topics

Who ends up getting into Heaven? I know tons of people that I think will make it that aren't members of the church. More, in fact, then people in the church who I don't think will make it? That's not really fair, because I really don't think that anybody will NOT make it. For example, if somebody left the church, but are still a good person, does that mean they won't make it? Probably not automatically. I don't know anybody else's circumstances or anything. I can't judge anybody on this topic. Even Hitler can make it into Heaven if he repents. Repented. (Can he still repent? More on that later.) That's a huge hold up for some, that are all like, 'If my ex-husband's in Heaven there's no way I'll ever go there!' and other such silliness. Or Ivan, in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, who says that if God allows evil to exist in the world then he wants nothing to do with God and is giving up his ticket into Heaven. See this video here: The Problem with Evil

So people not in the Church, we know that if they would have accepted it in this life and just didn't because they never heard it or something, they're good to go, right? "Thus came the voice of the Lord unto me, saying: All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God" (D&C 137:7). But that's, like, only people who would have received it. What about those who heard it and didn't accept it for one reason or another? What if it was a good reason? What if they were told Mormon missionaries were of the Devil so they were just doing their best to serve God to the best of their ability by shutting out the Mormon missionaries? They didn't know any better!

So, my own personal opinion is this: Everybody, member of the church and nonmember, will be judged according to the light and knowledge we had. So a Jew eating pork would be held guilty, not because pork is against God's health code (it isn't) but because the Jew thought that is was and did it anyway! If you think that caffeine is against the Word of Wisdom, it doesn't really matter if it is or not, if you drink it you're going against what you think to be the true law and thus it counts against you. 

I know what you're thinking, you're thinking, Woah Andrew, calm down, it sounds like you think that things aren't inherently right or wrong, it's just your opinion of them that makes it right or wrong, which is not the Gospel. Right, well what are the commandments? The set of rules that will lead to the most happiness. Some one that follows the true commandments is going to be happier tan someone who does not follow the true commandments. 

Plus, everyone has the light of Christ in them, which pretty much tells everyone on some sort of level if a rule they are following is right or not. "For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night. For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil" (Moroni 7:15-16) So really if a person is doing a naturally bad thing, like killing someone or being mean or stealing for greed or etc. there really isn't any excuse. But stealing because you're starving? Killing in order not not be killed? Sacrificing one to save five (like in the trolley problem)? These are more ambiguous.

Another: Helaman 7:23-24: "Now therefore, I would that ye should behold, my brethren, that it shall be better for the Lamanites than for you except ye shall repent. For behold, they are more righteous than you, for they have not sinned against that great knowledge which ye have received; therefore the Lord will be merciful unto them; yea, he will lengthen out their days and increase their seed, even when thou shalt be utterly destroyed except thou shalt repent." The righteousness comes from not not sinning, but not sinning against the greater knowledge.

I am reminded of the character Emeth in the end of C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle, who is a faithful servant of Tash, but is troubled by the Tash priests who obviously don't really believe. In the end, he gets to the other side and meets Aslan, and immediately knows that he was wrong his whole life. However, Aslan says to him that all the good things he did were actually done in Aslan's name, not Tash's, because Tash is evil and Aslan good. Emeth was doing the best he could with the light and knowledge he had. 

Now, obviously, we know as Christians that we need to accept Christ and be baptized and such to be saved, but that's why I love that the Gospel teaches us about the Spirit World, where people can come to a full knowledge of the truth and fully accept Christ as their Lord and Savior. 

I'm not really sure how this all works, will they get a chance to accept the truth in the next life (Spirit World) even if they got the chance in this life and rejected it? God loves everybody and is super merciful. And yet there's also this whole justice thing. Can mercy rob justice? "I say unto you, Nay, not one whit" (Alma 42:25). So what's the relationship? The true relationship? Well, in reality it doesn't really matter to us, because we are commanded to forgive seventy times seven times (read: infinite) but God can choose who to forgive. My final point on this is: We cannot judge who will get into Heaven or Hell. We can't judge anybody. (Including Hitler. If he wants to repent, let him.)

So how and why on earth would anyone just choose not to go to Heaven, if it is completely up to us? Let's look at Mormon 9:4: "Behold, I say unto you that ye would be more miserable to dwell with a holy and just God, under a consciousness of your filthiness before him, than ye would to dwell with the damned souls in hell." Love that scripture. But what it means is that in the end we're invited to go as high up as we want to go, but the wicked will be more unhappy in Heaven, so they choose not to go. Sad day. 

Yes, I know, the idea that God doesn't say to anyone 'You can't come in here to Heaven' sounds totally like "there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God--he will justify in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for they neighbor; there is no harm in this; and so all these things, for tomorrow we die; and if it is so be that we are guilty, God will bat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God" (2 Nephi 28:8), but it's not! Because what those people saying that stuff failed to realize is that going to Heaven isn't just going to Heaven; going to Heaven is Being like God. 

And those people, once they actually come face to face with God, will be so ashamed of their own sins, being brought "to stand with shame and awful guilt before the bar of God" (Jacob 6:9) that they "would fain be glad if [they] could command the rocks and the mountains to fall upon [them] to hide [them] from his presence" (Alma 12:14). In other words, all these guys that eat and drink and be merry and think that they'll get into Heaven anyway won't even want to go there.

As Brad Wilcox says, "Heaven will not be haven for hose who have not chosen to be heavenly." Link to his awesome talk here: His Grace is Sufficient

Much of my justification for my way of thinking comes from scriptures, of which I'll just share a few. Alma 32:19: "And now, how much more cursed is he that knoweth the will of God and doeth it not, than he that only believeth, or only hath cause to believe, and falleth into transgression?" In other words, those with more knowledge about the truthfulness of a commandment will be punished more for breaking it than someone with less knowledge that it was a true commandment, even if it was the exact same commandment, it was the follower's belief in it that causes the reward or punishment.

So if God knows the true character of a person and she's all like, 'I'm not gonna repent,' and then she dies, can she still choose to? I would argue yes, but that she probably just won't choose to. Evidence: Alma 34:34: "Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world." The reason given for not being able to repent is because the person will still be a non-repentant person, and therefore will choose not to.

My theory on this is this: Everyone that chooses to go to Heaven will, and everyone that chooses not to go to Heaven will not. That's it. God loves everyone so much that if someone chooses to come, He will not kick him out. 2 Nephi 26: 25-27: "Behold, doth he cry unto any, saying: Depart from me? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; but he saith: Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey, without money and without price. Behold, hath he commanded any that they should depart out of the synagogues, or out of the houses of worship? Behold, I say unto you, Nay. Hath he commanded any that they should not partake of his salvation? Behold I say unto you, Nay; but he hath given it free for all men; and he hath commanded his people that they should persuade all men to repentance." So God does not say to anyone 'Get out of Heaven!' (Except, you know, Satan.)

How do we prove that we do want to go to Heaven? How do we prove that we would be comfortable living with God and being like God? Well, to be like God we need to, you know, be like God. In other words, be righteous. But once again, how do we prove that we really are righteous? Answer: The same way that someone proves to you anything: through their actions. How can I prove that I love games? By playing them. How do I prove that I love my wife? By serving her. If I didn't show Heather any sort of love, you could argue that I didn't love her, because if I truly did, I would prove it! "They do not love who do not show their love" (Two Gentlemen of Verona, act 1, scene 2). So if we truly wanted to be like God we would rove it by being like God. If we don't prove it, then there's no good argument that you even really wanted it in the first place. And you can later prove it by repenting, which of course, involves changing your behaviors.

You see, repentance is more than just saying you are sorry, or feeling you are sorry, it is changing yourself because of your sorrow. According to the Bible Dictionary under "Repentance": "The Greek word of which this is the translation denotes a change of mind, a fresh view about God, about oneself, and about the world." Okay, so this might be super hard for some, but my opinion of repentance is that if you ave truly repented of an act, if you were to suddenly go back in time to that very instant before you did it, you would not do it again a second time. Harsh, right? Because that means if I say I'm sorry but would still do it again if I had the chance, then that's not really repentance.

We've all hear that the analogy is wrong which says: sin is like nailing a nail into a board and repentance is like digging out the nail and filling in the hole. Why? Because what repentance actually does is give you a new board. Okay, let me just find the quote. Okay, got it: "In However Long and Hard the Way, President Holland discussed the analogy of life being a board. Each time we sin we drive a nail through that board. Unfortunately, many people think that when we repent the nails are removed, but the nail holes remain. He stated that no holes remain because after repenting we have an entirely new board" (Forgiven but not Forgotten). An entirely new board. That means that the person I am right is is literally different than the person who made past mistakes that have been repented of. And this is also how God can let people into Heaven, because everybody is imperfect, but no imperfect thing can get into Heaven, so how on earth are we supposed to do it? By through the Atonement becoming completely new people, new "boards."

In other news, the five take-aways from President Uchtdorf's talk last night: (1) Be patient. (2) Be faithful. (3) Be obedient. (4) Haters gonna hate. (5) Make the best decisions you can by following the promptings hat come to your hearts and mind God will consecrate your honest efforts.  His talk was kind of about how sometimes we have questions and need answers right now! but God works in His own time and we need to sometimes be patient. Also, some decisions He just doesn't care which one we do. I've heard it said, "God doesn't care about which breakfast cereal you eat." and sometimes it's the same for other things too, like who you marry or which job you get.

Pics from Christmas break

This vacation, Heather and I went to the zoo with Henry.

We also went on a train ride and saw Christmas lights.

We also went to see The Greatest Showman. And I saw Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Heather got me Ticket to Ride Europe for Christmas!

Joy is super cute.

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....