Warning: Boring Blog Post Ahead

This will probably be the most uninteresting, boring, and mind-numbing blog entry you've ever read. Seriously. Turn back now! No hard feelings if you can't make it all the way through! :)

Yes, I am a dork. I greatly enjoy playing card games, especially CCG's (collectible card games). Currently, my main game is based on Lord of the Rings. See my previous post Ah, Gaming to read more about the CCG's I play. Each player brings their own deck that you can customize from all the cards you have, and your decks do battle against each other. I love designing new decks and altering my current ones, trying to improve each deck whenever possible. The games themselves are also good fun.

If you've been reading this blog long enough, you know one of my dorky hobbies is to make dream cards of these games (making up my own cards). It is dorky, and it's not like these cards are every actually used, but it is interesting and amusing, and was a good way to waste time in class instead of listening to the teacher. :) One of my previous blog posts also talked about how I'd started making rules for my own CCG. I've made up rules for a game based on The Matrix, and one based on the Bible.

When I had designed the rules for the Bible game before, it would cause one player to be the "Hell" player, and one player to be "Heaven." The objective of the game was that the two sides - good and evil - were fighting over the soul of one person (the Bible talks about how there is spiritual warfare going on for peoples' souls, or something to that effect). I like the idea of it, and yet, that means that the player controlling the forces of evil can win, and - in the context of the game anyway - win the battle over that person's soul and send that person to Hell, which of course, isn't so wonderful at all.

I've recently rewritten the rules (well, the details are a work in progress). Here's a little tagline for the game (remember - yes, I am a dork):

"The world is an evil place. The forces of men and Hell have overtaken our once-perfect planet and its inhabitants, spreading lies and deceit and taking us farther and farther away from exactly the things we need for redemption. The battles may take place in streets or in fields or in the spiritual realms, but the forces of good and the armies of Heaven are fighting back to recover what we have lost and to make this world a better place, so that God's goodness and grace can be spread throughout the nations and to every heart."

Now the game revolves around the forces of good gaining control over places that were controlled by evil. Each player's deck contains cards that are both good and evil (your good cards battle against your opponent's evil cards, and vice verse), but the winner of the game is based on whose good cards can take control of the most places formerly controlled by evil.

After the rules are more solidified, I can start creating the actual cards for the game (and right now, by "creating", I mean typing in the card's information into an Excel spreadsheet). If I'm more ambitious, I can create actual graphical card designs. And maybe come up with a good name for the game.

You're still here? But why?

I've had lots of dorky hobbies like this over the years. And as a faithful blog reader (and you must be faithful if you've read this far), you are forced to read about it.