Category Archives: Games

Bible and Theology, Books by the Author, Games, Law and Politics, Memories, Temporal Anomalies/Time Travel

#504: Why I Started Writing

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #504, on the subject of Why I Started Writing.

Someone named Jay Oluwabukunmi contacted me (via LinkedIn) and wrote:

I recently came across your profile and was highly impressed by the quality of your content. Could you kindly share what motivated you to begin writing?

That’s an interesting question with a complicated answer, so I decided it would be better to share it here.

Scratch a writer and you’ll almost always find a reader.  I read quite a bit from a very young age, including a fair amount of science fiction and fantasy, but also mysteries, and the Bible, and quite a bit more.  I especially enjoyed C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams, and had a vague notion of writing the next great fantasy novel.  I suspect, though, that I was one of thousands who had that notion, and I wasn’t all that devoted to it–I was a musician, and envisioned my immediate future as heading into Christian contemporary records.

Still, I took a class in college entitled Creative Writing:  Fiction, partly because I needed to fill a slot and it fit my schedule, partly because I had this notion that when I retired I might write that novel.  I even started working on a novel while I was still in school, although it wasn’t all that good and I abandoned it.  However, for quite a few years I maintained, intermittently, the practice of keeping a literary journal.  My friend C. J. Henderson says don’t do that because you’re never going to sell such a thing, and you shouldn’t waste time writing something for which no one is going to pay you.  However, it is not only good practice, I have more than once remembered something I wrote in those journals and used it to write something new.

Pursuing my music career I got a job on the air of a small but significant contemporary Christian radio station, and eventually became the program director.  At some point we compiled a mailing list, and management decided we should send out a monthly newsletter.  It became my job to create this, so I wrote a fair amount of the content (my degrees in Biblical Studies helped immensely at this point) assisted by our overnight DJ for a time.  I also was introduced to the associate editor of a local newspaper, who liked my style and invited me to write some satire for his paper; two columns were published under the name M. Joseph Young, to avoid confusion with the Mark Young who was on the local radio station (also me).

Along the way I discovered role playing games, specifically beginning with Dungeons & Dragons™ but also playing several others in a variety of genres and settings.  Largely through this I was introduced to E. R. Jones, who needed someone who could write (and by this time I had finished a juris doctore, so I could certainly handle the technical aspect of writing) to help create a role playing game on which he had been working for half a decade.  We put a lot of work into that, he dropped out of the process before the final edit, but I’d made promises and so I pushed through and published Multiverser:  The Game:  Referee’s Rules along with Multiverser:  The First Book of Worlds.  I continued on that line, with Multiverser:  The Second Book of Worlds, and along with some people working with me on that (artists, supporters, gamers) we tried to make a go of that.

Then someone came up with the idea of creating a Multiverser comic, and as the in-house writer it fell to me to do the text.  I created three characters with two stories for each of them to be the basis for three issues, but then the artists said no, it couldn’t be done with our resources.  That fell into the back burner, and then emerged as Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel.  I learned quite a bit about structuring a novel by doing that, and have followed it with more than a dozen additional novels continuing those stories.

I was also writing web pages on a wide variety of subjects, mostly to get attention to sell the game.  I wrote about Bible and law, in which I had my degrees, and time travel, which had been discussed extensively in writing the game, and several other subjects, and suddenly one day I felt that I needed to put together a book, What Does God Expect?  A Gospel-based Approach to Christian Conduct, because it seemed to me that a lot of people didn’t understand the basics of Christian living.  After this, my wife suggested that one of my web pages should be expanded, and that resulted in About the Fruit, and I was now writing Christian non-fiction books.  Most of those came from a sort of compulsion, that this needed to be said and I was going to have to say it.

Along the way someone asked me to write a series for a new web site, Game Ideas Unlimited.  The site never materialized, but Gaming Outpost grabbed the series for a redesigned site.  At the same time I decided that since I had been elected Chaplain of the Christian Gamers Guild I should do something, and so I launched the Faith and Gaming series.  That subsequently got published in book form, and then a publisher approached me to release an expanded edition.  I was established as a writer in the role playing community.

More recently a publisher contacted me and asked if I would write a book for him, and we agreed that I would create The Essential Guide to Time Travel based on my internet writings on that subject if he would publish my at that time just finished apologetics book Why I Believe, and that established a continuing relationship which got several books back in print and introduced my New Testament analytical commentaries.

I’ve linked several of the books that are still in print.  The Multiverser books should be back in print soon; we’ve created a LinkTree which will be expanded as the new material goes online.  Other books both in and out of print are listed here.

That’s probably more than Jay wanted to know, but I’ve often said in my mouth all stories are long, and this was obviously going to be a long story.  I hope it helps.

Bible and Theology, Books by the Author, Games, Law and Politics, Logic and Reasoning, Memories, Music, Reviews, Temporal Anomalies/Time Travel

#500: A Five Cent Review

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #500, on the subject of A Five Cent Review.

As I was posting the four hundred forty-ninth mark Joseph “young” web log post, I realized I was approaching half a thousand, and wondered whether I should do something to note that milestone.  I decided that a quick look back picking out some of my favorite posts might be worth the effort.  If you missed these, well, I won’t say that there weren’t other good posts nor even that these are all necessarily the best, only that they are the ones I remember fondly.

Unfortunately, on my first pass through those original four hundred forty-nine posts, I marked sixty-five as significant in one way or another, and realized that I would be publishing another fifty before I hit the milestone in question, so I was going to have to go back and read quite a few articles and pare down the list a bit.  I did remove some of those originally included, but I added one or two as well.  Hopefully I’ve succeeded in producing something of quality.

Of course, I have made a practice since this mark Joseph “young” web log began of posting an annual review of almost everything I published over the previous year, here or elsewhere.  The most recent one was #490:  Looking Back, and the previous ones are linked from there.

  1. I test, politically, as a moderate slightly left of center, but I hold a number of more conservative views; one of those is on abortion.  I somewhere suggested that conservatives needed to find way to promote and explain their views to people on the fence, and this, #7:  The Most Persecuted Minority, was a proposed television spot.  It was eventually turned into a radio spot and aired on Lift-FM for a while.
  2. Also on the subject of abortion, #9:  Abolition compares the pro-life movement to the abolition of slavery, in an unexpected way.
  3. #10:  The Unimportance of Facts is my proposed explanation for why voters don’t care what the facts actually are, only whether the politician holds the same views as themselves.
  4. Written a few days after my father died, #51:  In Memoriam on Groundhog Day memorializes him with my recollections.
  5. Having read that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (now deceased) believed that abortion should be strictly a woman’s decision as an equal protection right (and not a privacy right to be decided by her and her doctor), I wrote #63:  Equal Protection When Boy Meets Girl, suggesting that in regard to unexpected pregnancies most of the advantages are with the mothers.
  6. I’m glad I wrote #65:  Being Married, because I have referred quite a few young couples to it in the years since.  It is a collection of some of the best marital advice I ever received, and worth a read even if you’ve been married as long as I have.
  7. #72:  Being an Author discusses how to identify such a person, that is, how to know whether you can call someone, including yourself, an author, or indeed a poet, artist, or musician.
  8. Having read that Neil DeGrasse Tyson stated it was highly likely that the universe was a similation, I suggested in #76:  Intelligent Simulation that this was entirely inconsistent with his assertion that the theory of intelligent design was not scientific.  The article quotes from my then-pending book Why I Believe.
  9. A satirical article becomes the springboard for a consideration of #79:  Normal Promiscuity, which looks at the fact that what were once identified as illicit and abberant sexual liasons because they were dangerous are now embraced and encouraged as normative.
  10. I genuinely enjoyed writing #83:  Help!  I’m a Lesbian Trapped in a Man’s Body!, a satirical look at the notion that our gender is dependent on something we believe about ourselves.
  11. #84:  Man-Made Religion challenges the notion that the diversity of religions demonstrates that they are all human inventions.
  12. A famous landmark ice cream shop in Milwaukee faced a protest and a boycott when the owner would not permit customers to order in Spanish, and in #87:  Spanish Ice Cream I explain why expecting him to do so is unreasonable.
  13. #88:  Sheep and Goats explains why the popular parable is so badly misunderstood and what it really means.
  14. I almost cut this one as I reread it, but it struck me that #90:  Footnotes on Guidance, as a recounting of my own experiences, might be useful to those whom God is leading to places they did not expect to go.
  15. #93:  What Is a Friend? describes two different understandings of what constitutes friendship, and how that matters.
  16. The notion of government taxing the rich to help the poor is put into perspective in #105:  Forced Philanthropy, asking whether we want the government eagerly awaiting our deaths so it can spend our money.
  17. I wrote what I consider a very valuable nine-part series about ministry, how to recognize and identify it, and how music sometimes fits into it.  The last of those, #107:  Miscellaneous Music Ministries, is not the best of them nor the most useful, but it does briefly identify and link the other eight, and so is the easiest to include here.  I would recommend the entire series, but usually find myself recommending specific entries in it which relate to particular ministries.
  18. Reacting to a discussion of my previously mentioned article on forced philanthropy, #108:  The Value of Ostentation looks at how ostentation actually helps the poor, and why it is a bit illogical to object to it.
  19. I explain why so much current popular Christian music is comprised of simplistic songs, and why this is not so bad a thing as good musicians tend to think, in #109:  Simple Songs.
  20. #114:  Saint Teresa, Pedophile Priests, and Miracles responds to the argument that God cannot exist if He allows priests to abuse children.
  21. Inspired by a television show, #115:  Disregarding Facts About Sexual Preference applies it to reality, noting that people who deny a connection between environmental factors and homosexuality are ignoring facts.
  22. #120:  Giving Offense is primarily about tolerance, that it does not mean declining to state opinions but only willingness to respect those with whom we disagree.
  23. #126:  Equity and Religion addresses the argument that governments should not provide funding for pre-school education run by religious organizations.
  24. #130:  Economics and Racism explains why racism, by and against everyone, rises when economic conditions fall.
  25. #132:  Writing Horror gives a few tips on writing horror stories and running horror in games which must be worth reading, because Places to Go, People to Be republished it in French as Maîtriser l’Horreur.
  26. A misunderstanding of what it is to be “racist” inspired the composition of #135:  What Racism Is, clarifying that blacks and other non-whites can be and frequently are racist against whites, and that assuming that because someone is white she is racist is a racist assumption.
  27. I wrote a four-part miniseries on the sin and judgment in the first chapter of Romans.  The fourth part, #141:  The Solution to the Romans I Problem, links and summarizes the first three, and gives the solution, that we Christians need to repent of our hidden idolatry.
  28. Responding to a foolish statement from PETA, #162:  Furry Thinking discusses the proper relationship between humans and animals.
  29. In the 70s and 80s I asked a lot of major contemporary Christian musicians their advice for anyone wanting to do what they do, and in #163:  So You Want to Be a Christian Musician I consider the best of that advice, and what we should really want.
  30. I refer people to #168:  Praying For You frequently–whenever someone asks me to pray for them–as it explains what I think is a correct understanding of the obligations created by such prayer requests.
  31. I was hesitant to write #193:  Yelling:  An Introspection, which discusses the futility of yelling and the negative counter-productive impact it has, but several readers thanked me for it.
  32. I would be remiss were I not to mention at least one article about temporal anomalies, and my list includes #199:  Time Travel Movies That Work, a few films in which the outcome is not disastrous.
  33. #200:  Confederates actually argues that the American Civil War was about modern issues like state drug policy and immigration rules.
  34. #207:  The Gender Identity Trap suggests that the idea that someone can be a different gender inside than their physical sex is entirely about prejudices and stereotypes, with nothing to support it in reality.
  35. #208:  Halloween is one of two articles I wrote about the holiday (the other Faith in Play #11:  Halloween) examining Christian attitudes toward it.
  36. Following up on #207:  The Gender Identity Trap, #212:  Gender Subjectivity observes that no one can know that he feels like the wrong gender inside, because that isn’t more than that he doesn’t feel the way he thinks society expects him to feel, and in this case society is simply wrong.
  37. #215:  What Forty-One Years of Marriage Really Means is an addendum to the previous #65:  Being Married, providing an important understanding of what it means that marriage is a covenant, not a contract.
  38. #216:  Why Are You Here? answers the existential question, that is, why do we exist.
  39. #230:  No Womb No Say challenges the notion that men, not having uteruses, should not be able to express an opinion about abortion, by raising a different issue in which men lack the requisite anatomy but still are expected to express an opinion.
  40. #239:  A Departing Member of the Christian Gamers Guild answers suggestions that involvement in fantasy role playing games is detrimental for Christian faith.
  41. #245:  Unspoken Prayer Requests explains why I think they are theologically invalid.
  42. In June of 2019, after attending The Objective Session of The Extreme Tour, I began publishing my songs on this web log.  I ranked about forty of them based on music, lyrics, and the quality of the performance and recording I had available, and began with the one I thought (with a bit of input from one of my sons) best, #301:  The Song “Holocaust”.  It includes a link to a recording of the song.  Additional songs are chained beginning with the second, at the bottom of the article.
  43. #309:  Racially Discriminatory Ticketing highlights and explains a blatant example of racial discrimination by blacks against whites.
  44. In March of 2018 I began a miniseries about early contemporary Christian and Christian rock musicians, still ongoing, with Larry Norman.  Two years later the thirty-ninth entry in that series focused on one of the best bands of the eighties, #342:  Fireworks Times Five, with extensive links to videos from all four of their excellent albums.  It also links the previous thirty-eight such articles.
  45. In 2020, after COVID-19 caused the cancellation of the live Origins game festival, Black Lives Matter protestors demanded that the corporation running the gaming convention make a public statement in support of their position or face a boycott, which shut down efforts to launch an online convention.  #344:  Is It O.K. Not to Make a Statement? attacks this divisive and destructive policy as a blow against the constitutional right not to speak about something.
  46. A frustrated musician asked the question on a Christian music Facebook group, and I offered an answer in #352:  Why No One Cares About Your Songs, which I think might be a must-read for those who aspire to any creative endeavor.
  47. In the discussion of the polarization of America, I suggest in #375:  Fixing the Focus that many Christians have our eyes on the wrong things.
  48. The old economic principle derived from sheep grazing on common land finds a new and problematic application in the world of online retailing, elucidated in #377:  A New Tragedy of the Common.
  49. Normally I link reviews, but this one was sent to me privately, and was the first review I saw of my book Why I Believe, so I feel I would be remiss if I failed to mention my reprinting of it in #386:  An Unsolicited Private Review.
  50. A popular song, a friend’s pregnancy, and the recollection of a spoiled surprise party prompted me to write #394:  Unplanned, suggesting that there aren’t really any accidents, and, again, talking about abortion.
  51. The question was asked, specifically in relation to worship, and I offered an answer in that context which extends beyond it, explaining #396:  Why Music Matters.
  52. #406:  Internet Racism gives reasons for rejecting the call (in Great Britain) that those who post racial slurs against the poor performance of black athletes should be brought up on criminal charges.
  53. I was personally asked to respond to a long article giving ten reasons why the Biblical account of the exodus was untrue, so I wrote an eleven-part miniseries.  It concluded with #425:  Do Similarities Between the Accounts of Moses’ Birth and Certain Myths Make Him a Fictional Character?, which also links and briefly summarizes the ten previous articles.
  54. One of my patrons asked me for #426:  A Christian View of Horror, which suggests that to some degree it can be embraced, but ultimately there is one insurmountable problem.
  55. #429:  Luther College of the Bible and Liberal Arts speaks of the legacy of a small school whose campus has been almost completely obliterated by time.
  56. A couple decades back, the respected Australian role playing e-zine Places to Go, People to Be launched a French edition, and asked my permission to translate articles I had written for them to release in another language, and subsequently to do so with articles I had published through other sites.  Late in 2021 I finally got around to compiling a linked list of what was was then twenty-six translated articles, in #431:  Mark Joseph Young En Français.
  57. #434:  Foolish Wisemen draws a lesson about celebrating Christmas versus the rest of the story from the account of these visitors.
  58. #444:  Ability versus Popularity discusses contests in which the public is asked to vote for the best, and contestants encourage friends who know nothing of the competitors to vote for a friend.
  59. I had recently seen the argument that laws restricting abortion were an impingement on the religious practice of Jewish women, and since I had heard the same argument decades before in Senate hearings I wrote #446:  The Religious Freedom Abortion Argument, and decided to include it here.
  60. #449:  Cruel and Unusual is not exactly about the death penalty and expresses no opinion on it, but does find fault with the protest that opposes it by attempting to make it more painful.
  61. #459:  Publication Anticipation provided a list of my books recently published in 2021-2 plus my expectations for 2023 and beyond.  Those mentioned there which have been published since are listed in the 2023 review article mentioned at the top of this page.
  62. I’m listing #469:  Church History because it was an answer to the last question I was asked by my long-time friend John Mastick which I answered in a web log post before he died.  His question was about what distinguished Calvinists, Pentecostals, and Charismatics from each other, and I threw in Catholics, Lutherans, and Evangelicals for clarity.  He had previously prompted #413:  The Abomination of Desolation and #465:  Believing in Ghosts.
  63. The issue arose in our study of the Gospel According to Mark in the Christian Gamers Guild’s Chaplain’s Bible Study, leading to an expanded exploration of it in #475:  The Mother of Jairus’ Daughter, which I contend is the woman cured of bleeding in the healing nested in the middle of that miracle account.
Games

#497: Game Ideas Unlimited: Vivid Recovered

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #497, on the subject of Game Ideas Unlimited:  Vivid, Recovered.

Decades ago I was writing the weekly Game Ideas Unlimited series at Gaming Outpost.  It was in the main lost when that site crashed.  Then about six years ago the monthly series RPG-ology launched, and the webmaster at the Christian Gamers Guild said he hoped to see ideas from the earlier series revived.  I had a few saved on my drive, and converted them to repost, and rewrote a few from remembered ideas.  Then editors at the French edition of Places to Go, People to Be discovered that quite a bit of the series was preserved at the Internet Archive, and provided information for me to access it.  Conversion of many of the articles to the new series began, with an effort to keep them in the original sequence, although interspersed with new material.

However, some of the earlier ideas were recreated in articles in the new series before these were recovered.  In some cases, it made sense later to recover the original as a new entry.  However, the rewritten RPG-ology #15:  Vivid was similar enough to the original Game Ideas Unlimited version that a second article on the same point would be overly redundant.  Still, I was reluctant to lose the original.  Hence I made the decision to include here: Game Ideas Unlimited:  Vivid

[Five weeks A few months] ago, in an episode of [this the RPG-ology] series entitled Senseless, I spoke of my terrifying trip through Skinner’s Falls during the flood.  Then I told it in order to look at those moments at which we are completely robbed of our ability to think or act; but I also said that I usually tell it for another reason, and that when I do I tell it with another story.

This is that other story.

We were hiking through some caves.  The plan had been for us to enter in one place and exit from another, so we had our gear with us.  But things did not go well; a weak ceiling collapsed, and we were cut off from our guide.  We were not certain even whether our guide had survived.  Fortunately we had food and water, and some reliable lamps which would last quite a while if we were careful.  So for lack of a better plan, we began exploring the caves beyond where we were in search of an escape route.

We kept pushing ourselves, exhausting every path we found.  But eventually we were faced with the possibility that there was no other exit.

There was one chance.  We had at one point come to what we had ruled a dead end; but it was not a dead end–there was a crevice, a wide crack in the floor like something from the mines of Moria, and another passage on the other side.  The heat rising from this fissure was intense, but the way it split there were islands, pillars, fragments of floor between us and the far side.  There were also stalactites within reach above us, good heavy ones that would probably suffice for safety lines.  We had rope; we had other gear.  It appeared that we would either cross here, or wait in the hope that someone would dig us out.

Over the course of the next several hours we built a pair of makeshift bridges–catwalks, really.  We doused ourselves with water to help tolerate the heat.  Plotting a route across the gap, one at a time we moved from the edge to one of the nearest columns, to another, moving the bridges.  We tied ropes around our waists and had someone hold the other end; we tied ropes to stalactites as well as we could, and used these for extra security.  It seemed like hours.

In the end, all six of us collapsed in the corridor on the far side.  We were not out yet–we would still face several obstacles–but we would never forget this.  I can still see the makeshift bridges, the eerie light from the depths, the exhausted look on the face of my Yazirian friend as he collapsed next to me.

That’s right, it was a game.  You probably knew that–there are enough things in it that are unrealistic even with my editing.  We had built the bridges from strange mushroom-like growths we found in the caves; the pillars were huge crystals, and the crevice was flowing with hot magma about thirty meters below us, and we made a two hundred meter crossing.  But I remember it.  I remember it vividly–I see these things in my mind’s eye, as clearly as the images I see of Skinner’s Falls, the four-foot walls of water coming at me as I stared helplessly into the surf.  The place comes alive in my mind, as if I had been there.

Total Recall [(1990)] suggested the idea that when a vacation is over all you really have of it is the memory of the vacation.  Thus if you don’t have the time or the money to take a truly exotic vacation, you can spend a couple of hours at a memory implant center and have them tailor the memory of a wonderful holiday.  You never actually experience the trip itself, but you have the ability to go back over it in your mind, recalling the high points and telling people what you never did.  It is a brilliant idea, and if the technology is ever developed I’m sure it will become very popular.

But we have something of that reality now.  Through our role playing games, we visit exotic places.  We can visit Mars, Titan Colony, even Middle Earth and Talislanta–places that don’t exist at all save in the minds of people; yet in our memories they are as real as anything else we remember.

And normally having told both stories and explained that the second is from a game, I would say that this is one of the great things I enjoy about games:  that I remember going places and doing things that were completely impossible, yet the memory is the same as if they were real.  It is one of the great things that sells me on this hobby.  But today I’m going to push beyond that point to something else.

Why is that game moment so clear in my memory?  There are other game moments I can call to mind–the time I in desperation challenged a skeletal warrior to a psychic duel to save the lives of my party, the time the illusionist accidentally opened a partial portal for a demon lord and I had to find a way to prevent it from coming through, the time we tricked a batch of space pirates into bringing us a second jetcopter so we would be able to carry all of our equipment with us when we left to assault their main base.  I certainly don’t remember every moment of every game; I probably don’t even remember every life and death moment (particularly not in Gamma World, in which it seemed that life and death were a regular crisis, occurring several times per session).  But I do remember some moments.  What is it that makes these moments so memorable, so vivid?

In every case in which I can remember clearly the moments of the game, in which they come alive in my mind’s eye, there seem to be two factors at work:  setting and tension.  Both of these must be present in some measure; but more than that, they must somehow connect to each other.  That is, the moment must be tense, in that there must be something at risk to the characters; and the setting must be clear, described in terms that make it easy to visualize; but more than that, understanding the scene must be important to resolving the tension.

In the situation described above, in order to get my people across that canyon I had to make myself aware of the details.  Where were these crystal pillars?  Could we trace a path that would take us across?  What was the stuff growing in these caves?  Could we make bridges from it?  How hot was it here, and what could we do to mitigate that as a problem?  What else could we see in this cave that would help us?  Getting a complete picture of where we were enabled us to overcome the obstacles–and also left that image imprinted in our memories.

In another game, we were being pursued by mind flayers into a vast cavern, a home of myconids (fungus men) which was heavily overgrown with exotic underground plant life.  They were going to catch us; it was a matter of time.  So I ordered a battle plan that would split us into three groups and catch them in our midst–an ambush in which one group would be the bait and the other two the trap.  In order to do that, I had to see the lay of the land, the nature of the bush, and be able to plot it.  I still remember it, because I needed that visual information to succeed.

Another fight was inside a prefabricated building.  There were security cameras on the walls, and we were caught in a firefight around a corner in the halls.  The terrain was part of the battle–we had to maneuver so that we could all fire at them while maintaining some degree of cover for ourselves around the bend.  That image comes to mind.

Yes there are images in my mind that do not involve battle; but even then, the scene was important to success.  Trying to break into that compound in which we had that fire fight involved us in identifying security measures and countering them, disabling a security robot on regular rounds, doing reconnaissance from the roof of the building–in all, trying to visualize the situation because our character’s lives might be on the line.  The settings were not all unusual, but they all had memorable features; the situations were not all life-and-death, but they all had the feeling of danger.

So I think to create truly vivid memorable moments, bear these things in mind.  You need to describe a scene clearly enough that your players are able to visualize it; and you need to create a sense that the scene itself matters in a way that makes them pay attention to the details.  Those are the moments they will recall, of which they will say they were there.

[Next week, something different.]

Bible and Theology, Books by the Author, Games, Logic and Reasoning, Memories, Music, Reviews, Temporal Anomalies/Time Travel

#490: Looking Back

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #490, on the subject of Looking Back.

Once again, as we did last year in web log post #461:  2022 in Review and in previous years linked successively back from there, we are recapping everything published in the past year–sort of.

I say “sort of” because once again some material is being omitted.  There have been a few hundred posts to the Christian Gamers Guild Bible Study which can be accessed there but aren’t really fully indexed anywhere.  Meanwhile, the dozen articles in the Faith in Play series and the similar dozen in the RPG-ology series were just indexed on the Christian Gamers Guild site in 2023 At the Christian Gamers Guild Reviewed, and won’t be repeated here.  The RPG-ology and Faith in Play series were both released in book form this year, along with two other books, RPG Theory 101 and Other Essays in Role Playing Games and An Analytical Commentary on The Book of Romans.  These are all available in paperback and Kindle format; follow the links for more information about them.

I also posted several days a week on my Patreon web log, which announces almost everything I publish elsewhere on the same day it’s published, but again omitting the Bible study posts.  There is also a bi-monthly review of my work at Goodreads under the title The Ides of Mark, now at sixty-two installments, which does include some information about those Bible Study materials.

This year saw the last of the web log song posts, at least as an ongoing series.  These included:

I continued posting the ninth Multiverser novel Con Verse Lea, featuring Lauren Hastings, Tomiko Takano, and James Beam, from chapter 27 to the end (chapter 85), which are indexed there along with several behind-the-writings posts about it, and after posting a few character papers to the support site I continued with the tenth novel, In Version, featuring Robert Slade, James Beam, Joseph Kondor, and Derek Brown, through chapter 91.  Behind-the-writings posts on these two books included web log posts:

Collaborator Eric R. Ashley and I have managed to finish the twelfth novel, A Dozen Verses, and the thirteenth, Multiverser:  The Thirteenth Story, and are working on one called Verse a Tile.  Separately, I picked up the horror book I dropped, Corpoises, and wrote a bit more, and will probably finish it shortly.  I’m also continuing setup work on the analytical commentary series.

I think the rest of everything is a bit miscellaneous and disorganized, but here’s what I find.

Mark Joseph “young” web log post #465:  Believing in Ghosts considers whether ghosts exist and what attitude Christians should have about them.  It was an answer to a question from a friend.

Another question from the same friend led to post #469:  Church History, rather narrowly focused on distinguishing Reformation Protestants from later Evangelicals and both from Pentecostals and Charismatics.

Responding to a question from a time travel fan, #474:  Preliminary Temporal Thoughts on Paper Girls looked at the description of a television series and the time travel implications.

In our Christian Gamers Guild Chaplain’s Bible Study the accout of the healings of Jairus’ daughter and the woman who touched the hem of his garment arose, and when I suggested the woman was the girl’s mother I was asked why I thought this.  That seemed too big a question for the Bible study, so it became web log post #475:  The Mother of Jairus’ Daughter.

A few years ago someone had written to ask me what I knew about Bernice Wurst, an artist who was a friend of my mother who gave me two of her paintings.  I had featured one of them in an article in the Game Ideas Unlimited series.  It bothered me that when I looked for information about her on the web, there wasn’t much, so I decided to record the few reminiscences I could recall in post #486:  Bernice Wurst:  Impressions of an Impressionist.

In other news, I made it to AnimeNEXT this year, and expect to be invited coming up in June once again; I edited and subsequently reviewed two books for a friend–the BeautyAndTheBell trilogy–and expect to start on the third soon; and I posted a few recipes and some other images to Instagram.

I think that summarizes the year; the new year has already gotten started, but you can keep up by following my social media sites including Patreon.  I’ve already started something new this year, but maybe I’ll tell you about it next year once I see how it goes.

Books by the Author, Games

470: Verser Turnings

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #470, on the subject of Verser Turnings.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first eight Multiverser novels,

  1. Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel,
  2. Old Verses New,
  3. For Better or Verse,
  4. Spy Verses,
  5. Garden of Versers,
  6. Versers Versus Versers,
  7. Re Verse All, and
  8. In Verse Proportion,

in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book).  Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as I am posting the ninth, Con Verse Lea,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

This is the fourth post for this novel, covering chapters 52 through 68.  Previous behind-the-writings posts for Con Verse Lea include web log posts:

  1. #460:  Versers Reorganize, covering chapters 1 through 17;
  2. #463:  Characters Unsettled, covering chapters 18 through 34;
  3. #468:  Characters Wander, covering chapters 35 through 51.

There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.

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Quick links to discussions in this page:
Chapter 52, Takano 73
Chapter 53, Beam 143
Chapter 54, Hastings 246
Chapter 55, Takano 74
Chapter 56, Beam 144
Chapter 57, Takano 75
Chapter 58, Beam 145
Chapter 59, Hastings 247
Chapter 60, Beam 146
Chapter 61, Takano 76
Chapter 62, Beam 147
Chapter 63, Hastings 248
Chapter 64, Beam 148
Chapter 65, Takano 77
Chapter 66, Beam 149
Chapter 67, Hastings 249
Chapter 68, Beam 150

Chapter 52, Takano 73

This was marked for a Hastings chapter, and I was at least several days trying to decide how to proceed.  The problem was that meticulous coverage of everything Lauren needed to teach them would be dull, but at the same time skimming over it in Lauren’s viewpoint would have to be detailed.  I then realized that Lauren would also be setting aside prayer time, which I would prefer were covered third-person.  So I changed the heading to Tommy.

Most of it was thought of as I finally got around to typing something, again several days after I changed it to Tommy’s viewpoint.  I’m contemplating how to get a Bible to her, and have been considering a sort of magic technological solution.

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Chapter 53, Beam 143

I had known for a while that I needed this to be a trap, but couldn’t decide how it would work.  My first thought was some kind of portcullis dropping to block the exit, but it seemed too primitive and ineffective.  My second thought was that the enemy would have rigged the first room to explode and collapse, but that would be complicated and possibly beyond what they were able to do.  I discussed it with Kyler, who reminded me that when he was in this world, the thing that ultimately took him out of it was an ambush, so I went with that.

I am not certain whether Beam will survive the ambush.  It was obvious that Beam has more assets than Kyler had, most notably the early warning system of Bob.  The upside of surviving the ambush is that this world still offers numerous opportunities for action, and I’m not at all certain where I might send him next.  The downside is if this doesn’t kill him I’m not sure what will.  But I don’t have to make that decision yet.

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Chapter 54, Hastings 246

I was pondering what to do with Lauren at this point.  However, I had just had Tommy thinking about getting a Bible somehow, and realized that at some point Lauren has to deliver the gospel to these people.  It was still a few days on top of the previous few days in which I pondered what to do, but once I started writing the chapter came fairly smoothly.

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Chapter 55, Takano 74

I was going to make this a Beam chapter, but my brain was engaged in the next step for the Hastings/Takano story, and I still had not quite worked through what Beam was going to do, so I went with Tommy.  Besides, Tommy’s chapter count was significantly lower than the others, and I sort of felt she needed to catch up a bit.

This chapter sort of moved from one thing to another, but it covered a lot of important parts.  I know what happens next for Tommy, but I needed a break before that could happen.

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Chapter 56, Beam 144

It struck me that Beam’s best strategy would be to take out the leadership, but that he had no way of knowing who or where that was.  Then I realized that Turbirb’durpa could hear the thoughts of the leaders, and so know what the leader was thinking—but would that enable him to locate the leader?  I decided that yes, he did know whence the thoughts came, and as I started writing I recalled his actions back in his first appearance, where he was aware of the location of those whose thoughts he heard.  That enabled Beam to target the leader, because Bob could point him in the right direction.

I always thought that a rocket was the best choice here.  I had often considered using rockets, but always saved them, and after I had fired the rocket I looked up Dawn’s equipment list to find that there were half a dozen, which meant five left.  I wasn’t going to use them all here, but it also said several crates of grenades, and I remembered her grenade launcher, so I used that to blow holes in the enemy line.

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Chapter 57, Takano 75

I had already written several chapters at one sitting, but I had this, and Lauren’s speech, in mind since I started with Lauren being told it was time.  I knew that somehow Tommy was going to manage to get Bibles delivered despite the fact that they couldn’t get anything delivered, and this was that.  The rest was for continuity.

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Chapter 58, Beam 145

I wasn’t sure how this would work, but pieced it together on the fly.  Every paragraph was devised as I reached it, from the marching order to the fight to the decision to follow Warren’s lead.

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Chapter 59, Hastings 247

When I wrote that God had already given her the words, I had this opening in mind.  I’m not an evangelist, either, but I tried to piece together enough of a message for her to deliver.  I also decided early that the truck would arrive with the Bibles during her speech, and it made sense for that to end her speech, but to do so once she had said everything she needed to say.

The embossed Bible was a last-minute decision.  I knew she would get a new Bible at this point, but since they were being distributed to the mass of people I wanted a reason why this one wasn’t also given away, and making it different and putting her name on it would do that for me.

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Chapter 60, Beam 146

At this point I was trying to figure out how to wrap up Beam’s story here, and Lauren’s also, and where to send either of them next.  I wasn’t coming up with any decent ideas.

The chapter was short, because I actually had not solved the problems it posed.

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Chapter 61, Takano 76

I had been contemplating what direction to take with this chapter, and it struck me that Tommy had just had a prayer answered rather dramatically.  It struck me that she had technically worked a miracle, and she might wonder about that.

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Chapter 62, Beam 147

I had decided after I wrote the previous Beam chapter that the best place for Warren was going to be the caves, and that would be an acceptable temporary camp for the others.  I also realized that Warren and Ashleigh ought to be dressed in their outlaw garb, and that they did not store these in the same location, and it would be rude for Beam to ask where Warren kept his.  So I would have to split the party.

Once I knew that I would be separating Warren from the others, it struck me that Beam should give him one of those unimportant pieces of equipment so he could track him by scriff sense.  I wondered what he had, and all I could think of was that he had packed gems in The Dancing Princess; still, I checked his character sheet, and although there were other things such as pencils, I decided the gem was the best choice.  That caused me to think that he should also give one to Ashleigh, because even though I wasn’t expecting them to be separated, he wouldn’t know that with certainty and would decide it a good idea to have a backup plan.  I might have been influenced by the fact that I had within the last week posted Brown 208 (In Verse Proportion Chapter 41), in which Derek says, “one thing I’ve learned is that it’s better to have a backup plan than to wish you had one, even if it’s not a very good backup plan,” which I thought was an excellent quotable statement, even though I don’t think I ever mentioned that anywhere.

I had expected this chapter to take me to the caves, and possibly beyond, but the part about the gems filled it sufficiently that I didn’t want to overstretch it.

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Chapter 63, Hastings 248

I really only had the starting point, that Lauren would be asked questions about the Bible that people were now reading, and that Tommy would kill and cook something.  I decided on rabbit because I wanted it not to be fish and I thought deer was a bit too big.

The meal gave me the start into expanding the diet.  I’ve had some survival training, so I know a fair amount about what you can forage in the woods, but Lauren does not have that benefit, so I had to think a lot about what she would know was edible.

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Chapter 64, Beam 148

I had been ignoring Beam’s most disabling weakness, and as I began with thoughts of returning to the honeymoon suite I realized that he was going to have to eat, and that meant drink, and that with the need to wash down the rice and his weakness for alcohol, he was going to consume a lot of sake and effectively derail his romantic intentions.  But that wasn’t going to appear quite so obvious unless I had him awaken in the bed.  Once I did that, it struck me that I needed a reason for him to get out of the bed, and there was a somewhat obvious one, but there were also obstacles.  And so this chapter took shape.  I’m not certain what happens when he returns.

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Chapter 65, Takano 77

I sort of stumbled through this chapter, knowing only that at some point I wanted Lauren to bring back another, smaller, deer, and that she was going to initiate Bible teaching meetings.  I didn’t even expect the latter to be in this chapter, but as I was writing it arose naturally, so I included it.

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Chapter 66, Beam 149

I decided after I sent Beam to the latrine that when he returned Ashleigh would be awake and awaiting, and much of this was sketched in my mind before I wrote the previous Takano chapter–but I had to pad it a bit, because what I had was too short.

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Chapter 67, Hastings 249

I had no idea what I was going to do with this chapter, and slept on it.  I came to the idea that Lauren was going to realize she had committed herself to lead church, which she had never done nor felt called to do.  It was after I had started writing that I remembered she had taught Bible in the mutant earth world where she met Derek.  Then I gave her margins in the Bible to make notes, but realized that although she had paper she didn’t actually have a pen–she didn’t bring a quill or ink from the fantasy Arabia world.  I also checked Tommy equipment, confirming that she didn’t have anything of that sort, either.  That meant I had to explain Lauren’s notes in the margins of the Bible she gave to Tommy, but that was easy enough.

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Chapter 68, Beam 150

I started this chapter with nothing more than the first line and a few vague notions of what had to be done in the short term.  I developed as much as I could of the plan from there.

I had to look up Amanda’s name, and also what it was that she called Beam, because she had been off stage for so long.

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This has been the fourth behind-the-writings look at Con Verse Lea.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind-the-writings posts and another novel.

Bible and Theology, Books by the Author, Elections, Games, Law and Politics, Music, Reviews, Temporal Anomalies/Time Travel, Time Travel Movies

#461: 2022 In Review

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #461, on the subject of 2022 In Review.

Each year I try to post an index of everything I published in the previous year.  I’ve done it before, obviously, so working backwards you can find previous years (and in the early days of the web log, partial years) at:

It has been an unusually productive year–in the sense that it has been productive in unusual ways.  In the wake of the release last year of my comprehensive apologetics book Why I Believe from Dimensionfold Publishing, they put to print my summary of time travel theory, The Essential Guide to Time Travel:  Temporal Anomalies & Replacement Theory, and republished three earlier books, Do You Trust Me? summarizing salvation by faith as the only way of salvation ever, What Does God Expect?  A Gospel-based Approach to Christian Conduct about living a Christian life without following rules, and About the Fruit, a study of the famous passage in Galatians and its place in that book and in the history of the first century church.  There is a long list of pending titles moving toward publication next year, beginning with a printed collection of the Faith in Play series–more on that later.

There were twelve entries in that series this year, including several on archetypes, a few on bringing divine acts into the game, some about spirits and the afterlife, and a couple about Christianity and role playing games.  The companion series, RPG-ology, also slated to be compiled and released in book form next year, gave us eight recovered Game Ideas Unlimited articles from the old Gaming Outpost series, plus one more originally in the e-zine Daedalus, and a few new suggestions for running games.  All of those are indexed at the Christian Gamers Guild, 2022 At the Christian Gamers Guild Reviewed, along with a few other articles at that site.

There were also many posts on the Chaplain’s Bible Study, which finished the Gospel According to John and began working on Mark, along with several Musings posts.

The Multiverser novels continued in serialized form, finishing the eighth, In Verse Proportion, featuring Joe Kondor, Bob Slade, and Derek Brown, and starting the ninth, Con Verse Lea, with the return of Lauren Hastings, Tomiko Takano, and James Beam.  These were accompanied by behind-the-writings peeks as mark Joseph “young” web log posts:

In collaboration with author Eric R. Ashley, I’ve got the tenth and eleventh books fully drafted, and we have started on the twelfth.  I also posted updated character sheets for Joseph Kondor, Robert Slade, Derek Brown, Lady Shella, Ezekiel Smith, and Amira Vashti, and am working on the next set of these.

The web log also posted eleven songs–not twelve, because due to government red tape tangles I was off line for a full month, but it only cost us a bit.  We saw, and heard (there are audio files linked from the pages which contain the lyrics and a story behind the song) including:

  1. #436:  The Song “Trust Him Again”;
  2. #438:  The Song “Even You”;
  3. #441:  The Song “Fork in the Road”;
  4. #442:  The Song “Call to Worship”;
  5. #445:  The Song “How Many Times”;
  6. #447:  The Song “When I Was Lonely”;
  7. #450:  The Song “Rainy Days”;
  8. #453:  The Song “Never Alone”;
  9. #455:  The Song “King of Glory”;
  10. #457:  The Song “Greater Love”;
  11. #458:  The Song “All I Need”;

Other web log posts included:

There was a new analysis added to the Temporal Anomalies site, Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies unravels The History of Time Travel, a clever mockumentary in which time travel was never invented because its inventor prevented it.

Those upcoming books include compilations of the first five years of articles in the Faith in Play and RPG-ology series, plus a book of collected essays on role playing games, and then I hope to see a series of commentaries on the New Testament, one book at a time.  I began with Romans a decade and a half ago, worked my way through the end of Revelation, then doubled back to do John, Mark, and Matthew, and am currently working on Luke.  after that, I will be going through Acts, which will complete the New Testament hopefully within my lifetime.

On the web, I have a few Faith in Play and RPG-ology entries queued to post and a couple more waiting for me to set them up.  There will be more web log posts, and hopefully I’ll get to some of the time travel movies I’ve noted are available on various web streaming services.  Of course, the novels continue, and the Bible Study will be around for a while yet.

I have an Instagram account, and early in the year I decided to post some of my Gazebos in the Wild photos to it, along with some other things there.  They are mostly in the categories of nonsense or personal, but you’re welcome to look.

Those who wish to stay current on what is being posted can get that from my social media outlets, but particularly Patreon, where I announce everything that posts on the day it posts, other than the Bible Study; and the Goodreads web log The Ides of Mark which publishes twice a month and includes the Bible Study posts.

There are also still more songs to come, and one should be released later today.

Bible and Theology, Books by the Author, Games, Temporal Anomalies/Time Travel

#459: Publication Anticipation

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #459, on the subject of Publication Anticipation.

Because of a computer hiccough I lost a few files, including the index of this web log; my backup copy was almost three years old, so I have been rebuilding it.  In the process, I stumbled upon a post I wrote in anticipation of the release of The Essential Guide to Time Travel, and realized that at this moment I am anticipating the release of several books and should mention them here.

Before I look forward, I should look back.  The past year or so has seen the release of the apologetics book on which I was working for well over a decade, Why I Believe, the aforementioned time travel book, and new editions of Do You Trust Me?, What Does God Expect?, and About the Fruit.  Meanwhile, I continue to post chapter-by-chapter the Multiverser novels, currently publishing the ninth, Con Verse Lea, and having collaborated with Eric R. Ashley to finish the tenth, In Version, and make significant progress on the eleventh, Con Version.  There will be fiction coming out for quite a while.

There will also be more books in print.  Dimensionfold Publishing has decided to release the first five years of the Faith in Play series in book form–it is difficult to believe, but the sixtieth article posted in November, and there are more to come.  The book will feature a foreword by “Geek Preacher” Derek White, and also includes two articles from The Way, the Truth, and the Dice, Magic:  Essential to Faith, Essential to Fantasy, and Real and Imaginary Violence, plus two posts on the Christian Gamers Guild site that were never part of a series, Christmas and A Christian Game.  The publisher is planning to put it together in January.

Coupled with that, but scheduled to follow it, I am currently editing a companion volume covering the first five years of the companion series, RPG-ology.  Because many of those articles are reproductions of entries in the lost Game Ideas Unlimited series at Gaming Outpost, they are on average longer, but I plan to include two other essays, one the recovered original introduction to the Game Ideas Unlimited series as a reference point for recovered articles from that series, the other the first article of mine ever published on someone else’s web site, which happens also to have been Gaming Outpost, Morality and Consequences:  Overlooked Gaming Essentials.

I realized as I was compiling that book that there were quite a few articles that might be included–enough that Ken Goudsward agreed they should form their own book.  Thus I am also working on a collection of such essays under the tentative title Theory 101 and Other Essays on Role Playing Games.  Tentatively it will open with the three-part Theory 101 series from Places to Go, People to Be, System and the Shared Imagined Space, The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast, and Creative Agenda, followed by my contribution at The Forge, Applied Theory, then recover the earlier three-part series Law and Enforcement in Imaginary Realms, also from Places to Go, People to Be, The Source of Law, The Course of Law, and The Force of Law, followed by my RPGnet article I’m Not a Lawyer But I Play One in a Game, and also from RPGnet Intuition and Surprise.  Also included is Re-educating the Power Gamer, which I wrote for Wounds Unlimited and wound up at RoleplayingTips.com, and three entries from the mark Joseph “young” web log, Writing Horror, A Christian View of Horror, and A Departing Member of the Christian Gamers Guild.

I’ve written quite a bit more for various sites.  Some of those articles are lost to web sites that ceased to exist; some have been preserved either in the books already mentioned or in Faith and Gaming Revised and Expanded Edition.  I have a couple months before I’m in a position to finalize this book, so if you’re aware of something I wrote that I might have missed, let me know.  Also, I’ll be looking for people to write forewords to these two books, and I’d rather avoid the embarrassment of asking people I think I know in the RPG world, so I’ll start by saying if you’re interested in doing that let me know.

I suggested that I have a lot of books on the drafting table at the moment, and three hardly seems like a lot–and indeed there are more.  I have for the past decade plus been writing in depth Bible studies for the Christian Gamers Guild Chaplain’s Bible Study, and my publisher likes the look of the short one I sent him so I’ll be starting on setting up an analytical commentary on Romans once I’ve got these under my belt, after which I will proceed through all the epistles through Revelation and then bounce back to the beginning.  I have three Gospels completed and am working on Luke, leaving only Acts as the last book to tackle.  That’s twenty-three commentaries if we do them all individually, which I think likely, and a lot of work for me to set them up.  I hope that they find an audience.

I’ll continue writing here, of course, and at the Christian Gamers Guild, and in other places as they arise, so stay in touch.

Bible and Theology, Books by the Author, Elections, Games, Law and Politics, Logic and Reasoning, Music, Reviews, Temporal Anomalies/Time Travel, Time Travel Movies

#435: Hindsight is 2021

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #435, on the subject of Hindsight is 2021.

Once again, as we did last year in web log post #371:  The Twenty-Twenty Twenty/Twenty and in previous years linked successively back from there, we are recapping everything published in the past year–sort of.

I say “sort of” because once again some material is being omitted.  There have been a few hundred posts to the Christian Gamers Guild Bible Study which can be accessed there but aren’t really fully indexed anywhere.  Meanwhile, the dozen articles in the Faith in Play series and the similar dozen in the RPG-ology series were just indexed yesterday on the Christian Gamers Guild site, along with everything else published there this year, in 2021 At the Christian Gamers Guild Reviewed, and won’t be repeated here.  The RPG-ology series began recovering articles from Game Ideas Unlimited, the lost four-year weekly series at Gaming Outpost, so I republished its debut article as web log post #384:  Game Ideas Unlimited Introduction, for the sake of completeness. 

I also posted several days a week on my Patreon web log, which announces almost everything I publish elsewhere on the same day it’s published, but again omitting the Bible study posts.

Similarly, we finished posting the novel Re Verse All, featuring Lauren Hastings, Tomiko Takano, and James Beam, from chapter 58 to the end (chapter 156), which are indexed there along with the several behind-the-writings posts on it:

  1. #373:  Nervous Characters covering chapters 55 through 60;
  2. #376:  Characters Arrive covering chapters 61 through 66;
  3. #379:  Character Conundrums covering chapters 67 through 72;
  4. #381:  World Complications covering chapters 73 through 78;
  5. #383:  Character Departures covering chapters 79 through 84;
  6. #385:  Characters Ascend covering chapters 85 through 90;
  7. #388:  Versers Climb covering chapters 91 through 96;
  8. #390:  World Facilities covering chapters 97 through 102;
  9. #392:  Characters Resting covering chapters 103 through 108;
  10. #395:  Character Obstacles covering chapters 109 through 114;
  11. #397:  Verser Challenges covering chapters 115 through 120;
  12. #401:  Characters Hiking covering chapters 121 through 126;
  13. #403:  Versers Innovating covering chapters 127 through 132;
  14. #405:  Versers Converge covering chapters 133 through 138;
  15. #407:  Versers Integrate covering chapters 139 through 144;
  16. #409:  Characters Cooperate covering chapters 145 through 150;
  17. #411:  Quest Concludes covering chapters 151 through 156.

Then there were several related character papers in the Multiverser Novel Support Site, and we then began posting In Verse Proportion, bringing back Joseph Kondor in fantasy Arabia, Bob Slade in industrial age bird world, and Derek Brown on a lost colony spaceship, at this point having reached chapter 39.  It included one behind-the-writings web log post, #432:  Whole New Worlds, covering the first twenty-one chapters.

Yet there was quite a bit more.

Forgive me for burying the lead, as it were, but just as Why I Believe came out late last year, it was followed this year by the release of The Essential Guide to Time Travel:  Temporal Anomalies & Replacement Theory, the long-awaited book on the subject, at the end of June.  This summarizing of much of the information on the Temporal Anomalies web site includes updated analyses of four films and a comprehensive presentation of time travel theory.  Dimensionfold Publishing interviewed me about it by e-mail, which they published here.

Related to that, a reader sent a letter with comments on Why I Believe, which I edited a bit (removing personal references) and posted as web log post #386:  An Unsolicited Private Review.

Now, getting back to other publications, there were another dozen songs published this year:

  1. Web log post #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom”, inspired by the verse about cutting off your hand;
  2. Web log post #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy”, a frenetic bit of musical excitement;
  3. Web log post #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice”, a bit of serious eschatological humor;
  4. Web log post #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good”, with political overtones;
  5. Web log post #393:  The Song “Why”, one of my rare worship songs;
  6. Web log post #399:  The Song “Look Around You”, an old evangelistic song;
  7. Web log post #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command, one of the generally early ones;
  8. Web log post #408:  The Song “Given You My Name”, written for my wife;
  9. Web log post #412:  The Song “When I Think”, which I hope will play at my funeral;
  10. Web log post #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me”, the title self-explanatory;
  11. Web log post #428:  The Song “To the Victor”, another rare worship song;
  12. Web log post #433:  The Song “From Job”, calling believers to repentance.

And there will be another song published today, but since that’s 2022, we’ll not say more about it yet.

I touched on Christian music otherwise in web log post #374:  Christian Instrumental Music, where I raise the question of how to recognize it.  My series on contemporary and rock Christian music in the 80s also continued briefly with web log posts #389:  Brother John Michael Talbot and #391:  Pat Terry.  A question asked on a Christian musicians group on Facebook prompted the writing of web log post #396:  Why Music Matters.

It was a not insignificant election year in New Jersey, but my first political post, #375:  Fixing the Focus, took a more general view, suggesting that Christians need to get our eyes off politics and on faith.  Closely following that, #377:  A New Tragedy of the Common looked at how online shopping was impacting brick & mortar retail.  Another political post with religious connections was #394:  Unplanned, about pregnancies.  With rules related to COVID in flux, in the late spring I posted web log post #398:  New 2021 Face Mask Rules in New Jersey to help a few of my readers.  The really political stuff began with #400:  New Jersey 2021 Primary and #402:  New Jersey 2021 Primary Results, but before the election an issue across the pond in England called for a response in #406:  Internet Racism, asking whether online social media criticism of black athletes should be criminal.

Then as the election loomed I offered #427:  The New Jersey 2021 Ballot, including a quick look at the public questions, followed a few days later by #430:  New Jersey 2021 Tentative Election Results.

I was given a book for Christmas, which I read and reviewed at Goodreads, God Is Disappointed In You, by comic book creator Mark Russell.

Then early in May someone (and I don’t remember who, how, or why) persuaded me to register as a Goodreads author; or maybe I did that earlier, but it was in May that I was persuaded by Goodreads to launch yet another web log, this one entitled The Ides of Mark because it appropriately posted at the middle and end of each month, updating readers on what I had published during that period.  In that sense, it is somewhat redundant, as the aforementioned Patreon web log covers that as it happens, and this annual review recaps it all eventually.  However, Ides also covers postings in the Bible Study and omits a lot of the personal detail about what I’m doing besides writing which the Patreon blog includes, and gives less information about what I am writing that has not yet been published.  This year’s entries have included:

  1. #1:  New Beginnings, May first through fifteenth, launching and explaining the series;
  2. #2:  Establishing Patterns, May sixteenth through thirty-first, featuring several web log posts;
  3. #3:  The Charm, June first through fifteenth, around the primary election;
  4. #4:  About Time, June sixteenth through thirtieth, announcing the publication of the aforementioned time travel book;
  5. #5:  Going Somewhen, July first through fifteenth, citing an Amazon review;
  6. #6:  The First Quarter, July sixteenth through thirty-first, with a scattered batch of articles;
  7. #7:  Getting Noticed, August first through fifteenth, citing evidence that the blog was being read by someone;
  8. #8:  Ends and Starts, August sixteenth through thirty-first, with the end of Re Verse All;
  9. #9:  Quiet on the Surface, September first through fifteenth, including character sheet posts;
  10. #10:  Before the Storm, September sixteenth through thirtieth, with the remaining character sheets;
  11. #11:  Looking Busy, October first through fifteenth, with the launch of In Verse Proportion and the beginning of the series on Exodus, listed below;
  12. #12:  A Frightening Output, October sixteenth through thirty-first, finishing the Exodus series;
  13. #13:  Slowing Down, November first through fifteenth, including the index of the articles in French translation mentioned below;
  14. #14:  Holiday Season, November sixteenth through thirtieth, as activity winds down;
  15. #15:  Not Much Said, December first through fifteenth, continuing the quiet;
  16. #16:  Years Go By, December sixteenth through thirty-first, with my post-Christmas post.

Not all of that is repeated here, but the bulk of it is.  I also answered ten questions there, which you can find here.

Half a decade ago I wrote about those musicians who influenced me; this year it occurred to me to do the same of writers, and so posted #380:  Authorial Influences exploring that.

Quite a few Bible questions came up and were answered, beginning with web log post #410:  When to Pray, followed by a somewhat technical question about a passage in Matthew, #413:  The Abomination of Desolation.  Then another reader asked me to address a long and complicated collection of issues in an article that claimed the Exodus, as reported in the book of that name, never happened, and I produced an eleven-part miniseries of web log posts in response:

  1. The introductory article was #415:  Can the Exodus Story Be True?
  2. It was followed by an answer to the first objection, #416:  Does Archaeological Silence Disprove the Exodus?
  3. Turning to the second objection about whether such a departure could be organized, we offered #417:  Is the Beginning of the Exodus Account Implausible?
  4. The third objection was that given the number of escaping Israelites the line this would have created would have been too long to outrun Pharaoh’s chariots, to which we offered #418:  Are There Too Many People Escaping in Exodus?
  5. The fourth objection was summarized and answered in #419:  When Escaping in Exodus, Did the Israelites Have Too Much Luggage?
  6. In response to the fifth objection we wrote #420: Were the Hygiene Requirements in Exodus Impossible to Observe?
  7. The sixth objection asked and answered #421: Did Moses Write the Torah?
  8. For the seventh objection, we addressed the issue of anachronisms, and particularly those related to place names, in #422:  Are There Anachronisms in the Torah that Invalidate It?
  9. The absurdity of the eighth objection is displayed in #423:  What Kind of Infrastructure Did the Wandering Israelites Need?
  10. We looked at the penultimate objection in #424:  Did the Earth Really Stop Turning?
  11. Finally, the point was raised that there were similarities between the life of Moses and earlier accounts of Sargon, which led to the conclusion Do Similarities Between the Accounts of Moses Birth and Certain Myths Make Him a Fictional Character?, which also addresses a few final points.

After that, a Patreon patron asked about horror, so I produced #426:  A Christian View of Horror.  Comments on a Facebook group page related to one of my colleges concerning the fact that the campus is almost completely obliterated led to the writing of #429:  Luther College of the Bible and Liberal Arts, about the legacy such a place has without any memorial markers for the site.  I also finished the year last week with a post-Christmas post, #434:  Foolish Wisemen, something of a pre-epiphany epiphany.

Finally, I’ve had a long-standing relationship with the people at the French edition of Places to Go, People to Be, under which they have translated and republished quite a few of my articles.  I finally took the time to organize these into an index in English, at least for my own reference, which I made available as web log post #431:  Mark Joseph Young En Français, with links to such English versions as are available.

The writing of course continues, with more articles already in the queue, more work being done on the next novel, and more posted every week.  Thank you for reading, and particularly to those of you who have encouraged me through posts and reposts and likes, and who have supported me through Patreon or PayPal.me and the purchase of my books.

Bible and Theology, Books by the Author, Games, Logic and Reasoning

#431: Mark Joseph Young En Français

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #431, on the subject of Mark Joseph Young En Français.

Over two decades ago, the respected Australian role playing game e-zine Places to Go, People to Be asked if they could translate an article series I had written for them, three parts under the title Law and Enforcement in Imaginary realms, to republish in their then-new French edition.  This was the beginning of a long and continuing relationship during which they continued translating my work into French for release to a wider audience.  Recently I received word that they were releasing the twenty-sixth such article, and I had often realized that I had not been keeping track of what they had published and ought to do that, at least for my own sake, but also for yours.

This is in roughly the sequence in which the articles were originally translated and posted.

  1. La Loi et l’Ordre dans les Mondes Imaginaires – 1re Partie : Les sources de la Loi, written for and still published at the Australian version back in perhaps 1998 and translated shortly thereafter, was entitled Law & Enforcement in Imaginary Realms Part I:  The Source of Law, and dealt with how legal systems develop from primitive tribal structures to modern governmental systems, and how we derive laws from that.
  2. La Loi et l’Ordre dans les Mondes Imaginaires – 2e partie : la procédure judiciaire was the second part, Law & Enforcement in Imaginary Realms:  The Course of Law, presenting the issues of who executes the law and how is it executed, including what rights people might or might not have.
  3. La Loi et l’ordre dans les mondes imaginaires – 3e partie : Les Forces de l’Ordre finishes the series with Law & Enforcement in Imaginary Realms:  The Force of Law, dealing with matters of how and why we punish criminals.
  4. Des pièces de monnaie invisibles was originally a Game Ideas Unlimited article (at Gaming Outpost), more recently republished by the Christian Gamers Guild as RPG-ology #34:  Invisible Coins, about an illusionist technique and referee control of play.
  5. Gauche ou droite ? was again from Game Ideas Unlimited, again republished as RPG-ology #47:  Left or Right?, one of my personal favorites and another illusionist technique.
  6. Dans l’esprit de la radio is an article I wrote for the Winter 2004 edition of the e-zine Daedalus, entitled In the Spirit of Radio, and no longer available in English on the web.  Fortuitously I downloaded that issue, so I have a copy, and although it was not easy to convert PDF into HTML I expect it to post in the RPG-ology series next spring.
  7. La Sagesse dans les jeux de rôles, originally published as Game Ideas Unlimited:  Wisdom about how to play a character said to be wiser than the player, but only partially preserved on the web in English, it is my hope to reconstruct this eventually.
  8. LNS : de la théorie à l’application is a translation of an article originally published at The Forge and still available there as of last look, as Applied Theory, discussing how to apply concepts of gamism, narrativism, and simulationism to game design.
  9. Théorie 101 – 1re partie : le système et l’espace imaginaire commun is a significant piece.  Some years after I had written the Law and Enforcement series for the Australian e-zine, their editors put out a general call for someone to summarize the main features of role playing game theory as it was then being expounded at The Forge.  Being at that time involved in that work, I offered to compose something, and this, Theory 101:  System and the Shared Imagined Space, was the first of three parts.  It explains the concepts system, credibility, authority, and other aspects of how games work “under the hood” as it were that enable the creations of a shared world.  This article was later republished by Gaming Outpost, and the three-article translation was compacted and published in the French print magazine Joie de Role.
  10. Théorie 101 – 2e partie : Le Truc Impossible Avant Le Petit Déj’ is the second of the three parts, Theory 101:  The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast, discussing referee styles and how they resolve the conflict between the statement that the referee controls the story and the fact that the players control all the actions of its main characters.
  11. Théorie 101 – 3e partie : Les propositions créatives is the third part of the series, originally Theory 101:  Creative Agenda, discussing what is popularly called “GNS” or gamism, narrativism, and simulationism, the three primary approaches to player play, and what makes games fun for different people.
  12. Étreintes was originally Game Ideas Unlimited:  Embraces, and is scheduled to be reposted as RPG-ology #48:  Embraces on November 16 (2021); it deals with romance in role playing games.
  13. Valeurs was originally Game Ideas Unlimited:  Value, discussing what makes anything valuable or cheap.  It is on the list to be republished as an RPG-ology piece, but not yet scheduled.
  14. Récompenses was originally Game Ideas Unlimited:  Rewards, dealing with in-game reward systems, no longer available in English but on the list for eventually republication.
  15. Création de perso was originally Game Ideas Unlimited:  Chargen, about different ways of creating characters.  The English version only exists as a partial article, but eventually I hope to reconstruct it from the translation and republish it in RPG-ology.
  16. Du cash was originally Game Ideas Unlimited:  Cash, addressing the development of systems of exchange from barter through the invention of money in various forms to the future of electronic credit.  An English version exists, and will eventually be republished as an RPG-ology piece.
  17. Points négatifs was originally published as Game Ideas Unlimited:  Negative Points, a further discussion of character generation extolling the virtues of stronger and weaker characters.
  18. Maîtriser l’Horreur comes from closer to home, a translation of mark Joseph “young” web log post #132:  Writing Horror, about some of the elements that create a good horror story, whether for a book or for a game session.
  19. Moralité et conséquences : les fondamentaux oubliés. recovers the first article I wrote for someone else’s web site, Morality and Consequences:  Overlooked Roleplay Essentials, originally published among the earliest articles at Gaming Outpost around 1997 and restored as mark Joseph “young” web log post #237:  Morality and Consequences:  Overlooked Roleplay Essentials in 2018.
  20. Les Pactes avec le Diable is a translation of Faith and Gaming:  Deals, from the Christian Gamers Guild, about the Christian value in roleplaying deals with the devil.
  21. Le festin de Javan is again from the Christian Gamers Guild, Faith in Play #3:  Javan’s Feast, about an act of charity that rocked the game and impacted the players at the table.
  22. Histoire des Points de Vie was RPG-ology #3:  History of Hit Points, discussing the origin, development, and value of a fundamental mechanic in many games.
  23. Sentience was another Game Ideas Unlimited article, not spelled differently in English, and dealing with the elements of intelligence as a groundwork for creating alien minds.  It is scheduled for RPG-ology early next year.
  24. Funérailles reproduces another from Game Ideas Unlimited, this one republished recently as RPG-ology #46:  Deceased, asking why we don’t have funerals in our role playing games.
  25. Blessures is translated from Game Ideas Unlimited:  Wounds, addressing how events from adventures should impact character personality thereafter, which eventually should wind up in the RPG-ology series.
  26. Vous avez le droit de garder le silence… was more simply Game Ideas Unlimited:  Silence, about the relatively modern right against self-incrimination and how legal systems were different without it.  It, too, is slated for inclusion in the RPG-ology series.

The original French index on their site is here, for those more facile in French than I.  They expect to continue adding my material to their collection in the future, so I expect there may be a sequel to this article eventually.  My contributions are a drop in the ocean of excellent material they have gathered from a wealth of well-respected writers whom I will not begin to name for fear of omitting someone who ought to be mentioned.

Games

#384: Game Ideas Unlimited Introduction

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #384, on the subject of Game Ideas Unlimited:  Introduction.

I must begin by thanking Regis Pannier and the team at the Places to Go, People to Be French edition for locating copies of many of the Game Ideas Unlimited articles which were lost with the crash of the Gaming Outpost website on which they were originally published.  An effort has begun to restore as many of these as possible as entries in the RPG-ology series at the Christian Gamers Guild.  However, the first article in the original series was primarily an introduction to the author–that is, to me–and as I had been introduced in several articles in Christian Gamers Guild series (Faith and Gaming and Faith in Play in addition to the one already linked)  it was decided that the additional redundancy of yet another introduction was unnecessary.

I suppose the same argument could be made here.  However, at the Christian Gamers Guild there is the limit that I post two articles a month, one in each series (sometimes an extra here or there if there’s something that needs to be posted that doesn’t fit either of the series), and here the limit is really just that I need to post things when I have something to post.  In the interest of historical completeness I am here publishing the original first article in the Game Ideas Unlimited series.  It was originally published June 1st, 2001.  The links have been updated where possible and necessary, and there are a few [bracketed] editorial notes.

*****

Game Ideas Unlimited:

Introduction

by Multiverser author M. Joseph Young

  I play Multiverser, and I love the game.  But that's expected--my name is on the cover.  E. R. Jones had been refining the idea for half a decade when he brought it to me, and I spent five years working with him to hammer out the details and the text.  So you can take my opinion with however many grains of salt you wish.  As long as it doesn't bother you that I'm a raving fanboy of my own game, we should get along fine.  And I promise to mention it only when it matters.

  So why do I mention it now?  Well, for all of its strengths, the game is voracious.  It consumes worlds and stories and creatures and ideas at an alarming rate.  I've run as many as eight worlds in a single night, each of them completely different.  It's one of the things that most frightens people about the game:  where do you keep getting ideas?  It's not that hard, really.  I just mentioned an idea I'd written up to one of our long-time fans (someone who playtested the game before it went to print), and he said that he never needs to look for ideas because there are so many of them out there.  He's right; ideas come easily, once you get in the habit.  But if you're not in the habit, it's easy to get stumped.  In fact, you don't have to play Multiverser to run short on ideas.

  And that's where this column comes in.  I've become something of an expert on generating ideas.  I run my own games; I write game tips for Valdron Inc's Tip of the Week site; I develop ideas for game worlds and games for future publication.  I've got some tricks I use, and some ideas I can share.  And this column gives me the chance to share them.

  There will be something a bit different here each week.  Sometimes you'll find ideas for creatures, or for characters, with which to populate your game world.  These will be suitably generic, so you can use them with whatever game you're currently playing.  Sometimes I'll give you the basics of an entire game world, something you can use for a campaign, or perhaps something smaller like an unusual adventure situation.  I'll also throw around ideas in game theory, ways to achieve different effects in your games, referee and player techniques, and other things I find useful in games I've played.  You won't find every column useful to you.  If you're into fantasy only, my forays into sci-fi might be of only passing interest; and similarly if you're a sci-fi gamer when I get talking about a challenging dungeon level concept you might find it less than practical.  But I hope to go beyond just the practical ideas themselves to something far more practical:  the patterns of thought that generate these ideas, the way I can always find new and creative ideas that keep my players going and constantly bring them back for the next game.  I'm convinced that creative thought patterns can be taught and learned.  I've learned them from others.  I hope by this medium to teach them to you.  Who knows?  Maybe some of you will wind up writing brilliant new worlds for my future Multiverser sessions.

  But perhaps some of you don't know me.  I'd like to introduce myself.  The best way I know to do that and make this column useful to you is to point you to a few of the things I've written that relate to gaming.  That will give you some idea of how I think and what I think, and maybe whether it will be worth your time to come back next week for the second installment.  It will also give you a fairly substantial reading list if you try to tackle all of it; there's a lot more out there than I'm going to mention here.  But I think you'll find some of this useful.  This isn't the only kind of thing I'll be writing; but it is the way I think about things.  Oh--some of these are on other game support sites.  I really don't want to send you away from the fine materials here at Gaming Outpost; but a writer's credentials are usually that he's been published in other places, so I'm going to have to offer you those other publications as a reference.  As my father's Mississippi family might say, "Y'all come back now, y'hear?"

  A couple years ago I tackled the problem of players who like playing evil characters.  I'm not opposed to evil characters in my games; but I think that too many of them get away with murder.  This was the first of my half dozen previous contributions to this site, Morality and Consequences:  Overlooked Gaming Essentials [republished version], in which I examine how a referee should respond to the criminal, unethical, and immoral acts of player characters.

  If you've seen the Australian e-zine Places to Go, People to Be, you know they have some wonderful material.  It includes a three part series of mine, Law and Enforcement in Imaginary Realms.  The three parts, The Source of Law, The Course of Law, and The Force of Law, look at how to understand and build legal systems including laws, courts, police, and prisons, which are consistent with the worlds you play but surprising to the players.  Gaming Outpost liked this enough to reprint the first of these [here].

  A lot of gamers today complain about what they see as the old-style gamer who focuses too much on winning and not enough on story.  I gave some thoughts on this to Wounds Unlimited in Re-educating the Power Gamer.  Johnn Four of RoleplayingTips.com thought the article so helpful he reprinted it on his site.

  I've published quite a few web pages without the help of an e-zine; I won't burden you with all of them here.  But I will mention Confessions of a Dungeons & Dragons Addict, my entry in the debate about whether role playing games are satanic.  Obviously you know my answer (I'm writing for an RPG site); but my arguments might help yours, and there's a fair amount of my personal and gaming history included in the piece.  This one gets a lot of attention--GAMA and the Christian Gamers Guild are among those linking to it.

  You might be wondering why I haven't mentioned RPGnet.  Well, I can't mention everybody.  I've got articles in a lot of out of the way places (WebCMO has one of my contributions on One-to-One Marketing; I have some interests besides gaming).  But indeed I do have an article there which might be of interest to you:  Intuition and Surprise looks at just exactly what it is that gives a character that "feeling" that something is amiss, and how to use that in your games.

  I try to keep current an index [alas, an effort abandoned years ago] of everything that isn't just a forum post or newsletter contribution.  It's not all about games, but a lot of it is.  And I make myself available by e-mail to discuss these or just about anything else.

  Beyond that, there are a couple things I should mention.  I've got two undergraduate degrees in theology and a juris doctore, that is, a graduate degree in law.  I was accepted into membership in Mensa years ago.  I'm the father of five boys, all of whom are avid and creative gamers.  I've always been serious about my fun, playing and inventing games of many types since before I knew about role playing games.  My interests have been quite diverse over the decades; expect that to show from time to time.

  I look forward to sharing some of my as yet unpublished ideas.  Next week, something different.

*****

As mentioned, additional entries are available at the Christian Gamers Guild.