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Among my favorite RPGs is Alex Roberts' triumph of minimalistic, elegant design: For The Queen. Today I'm doing just with along with Kimi Hughes of Golden Lasso Games. For The Queen is a card drawing prompt game, and one prompt is always the game's last: "The Queen is under attack. Do you defend her?" That's today's mechanic, but we cover most of this pretty small game at some point.
You can back Kimi's new game Starscape on Kickstarter now!
Further Reading:
For The Queen by Alex Roberts
Starscape by Kimi Hughes
Oh Captain My Captain by James D’Amato
Socials
Kimi on Bluesky as well as Golden Lasso Games.
Happy Jacks on YouTube.
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Transcript
Sam: Hello, and welcome to season four of Dice Exploder. Each week, we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and decide whether or not to defend it. My name is Sam Dunnewold and my co-host this week is Kimi Hughes.
Two pieces of news at the top here. First, this is the start of season four. Hooray! Welcome back. And to support the season. I'm running another pledge drive over on BackerKit. Backers get to vote on a mechanic for the show to cover. Plus, there's a chance to buy a secret unreleased game from yours truly. It's a good time, please give me your money.
Number two dice Exploder has been nominated for an ENnie award. You can go vote now for it in the best streaming content category. There's a link for that in the show notes. Another great way to support the show.
Now today's episode: Kimi Hughes is the woman behind the happy Jack's RPG network, which creates great actual plays at RPG advice shows she's also a game designer publishing as Golden Lasso Games with a new game on Kickstarter right now. Starscapea tells the found family story of a star ship and its crew. Check it out. I've gotten a look at it and it's a really great and interesting game. There's a link to it in the show notes.
I first knew of Kimi through a mutual friend, but then before I had the chance to actually meet her, she just invited me to her birthday party. I was so thrilled and it was a great party. Kimi is so kind of welcoming. She's built this great local and digital community with Happy Jacks that's really just something wonderful.
And today Kimi and I are talking about a mechanic that I've wanted to cover on the show for a long time. The queen is under attack. Do you defend her? Answering this question is the last thing that you do in every game of For the Queen by Alex Roberts. And it's a perfect ending to a game that's to me just about as perfect as games can get.
I adore for the queen. It is such a magical game in so many ways that you're about to hear us gush about for half an hour. So honestly, let's just get right to the gushing. Here is Kimi Hughes with the queen is under attack. Do you defend her? From For the Queen.
Kimi Hughes, welcome to Dice Exploder.
Kimi: Thank you. I'm very excited.
Sam: I'm friggin pumped to talk about arguably my favorite roleplaying game of all time. For the Queen by Alex Roberts. Do you wanna tell us about For the Queen?
Kimi: Oh my gosh. So, For the Queen is a card based storytelling game. It can be a role playing game, but you can also kind of pull back from that a little bit if you want and just describe things. I've had games go both ways. This is like the perfect game to have in your bag whenever you go to a con or just, you know, a group of friends and you're just like, hey, it's two in the morning and I'm not ready to go to sleep yet. Let's do For the Queen. It seems like most of my games of For the Queen happen after midnight. I don't know what that says about me, but.
So it basically, the entire deck are custom prompt cards. And as you flip over the cards, it creates a story between the players. You're all serving a queen and throughout the game you create a world, you create your individual characters, you create your relationship to the queen, you create the queen herself and what she's like , and then at the end she is attacked and you have to decide if you are going to defend her.
And that is the mechanic we're talking about today.
Sam: Yeah!
The Queen is under attack, do you defend her? is probably the longest episode title that Dice Explorer has had yet. But I love that you the entire mechanic is like a question. This is the game that really taught me the power of questions, and really, really well written prompt cards, and you don't actually need more than that for a really quality game.
And I know some people like questions, well written prompts, provocative inquiries is not their thing, and that's fine, but it is remarkable to me that that is enough. That can be a whole game. And the format of For the Queen in particular is remarkable for its ability to be a complete roleplaying experience in 20 minutes.
Like, most of my games of For the Queen are 1. 45 to 2. 5 hours long, like movie length, but I play long with this game, I ask a lot of follow up questions, and a lot of people really can just pump out a whole game in half an hour, and have a great time, and boy do I wish more people did that and more games did that. I really love this game for its accessibility in that way.
And I don't think that was the intent behind the design of this game. I honestly would love a game Based on this framework that is trying to put accessibility to a broad audience as its, like, primary goal. And actually that game might be coming from James D'Amato OhCaptainMyCaptain. I believe he's sponsoring this episode in fact, you'll hear an ad about it later.
But yeah. I love this format. I love this game. I think it's super effective. Let's talk about this fucking mechanic.
Kimi: Yeah, and one of the things about it is, I have a bunch of friends who aren't really role players, and it's something that's really easy and accessible to them. Like, like you were saying, it, they don't have to feel the pressure of knowing a big system. They don't need to feel like, am I building this character right, or am I building this character wrong? They just have to sit down and answer the question that's in front of them, which most of us have been doing since elementary school.
And it's, it's, when you start in that micro level, it's just like a very gradual release, and they end up able to Contribute to a collaborative story and roleplay, but it's just like, all you have to do is just answer this one question first.
Sam: So, the queen is under attack. Kimi, do you defend her?
Kimi: I do defend her.
Sam: right.
Kimi: because uh, yeah. I feel like that's the answer that, like, happens the most rare, too. Like, in a lot of the games I've played, it ends up like, I'm the one who betrayed her, and blah blah blah.
Sam: I feel like I usually see a split, like, you take this one question, the queen is under attack, to the defender, you shuffle it into like the bottom half of the deck somewhere, and then once you get far enough into the game, like, oh, any card could be that card, we don't know when she's going to get attacked, and then eventually you get there. But everyone knows it's coming right away, so you're playing a little bit with that dramatic irony of knowing she's coming eventually, being able to play into that, similar to Trophy Dark, or Ten Candles, a game where like, you know everyone's gonna die at the end. I've talked about this on the episode I did with Jason Morningstar about transparency a lot.
But, something I really like that's different is that you are not playing to a predetermined outcome, you are playing to a predetermined question. And so, it's easier, I think, for people to sort of stake out different lanes around that question.
Like, I'm going to defend her, and I'm not gonna feel conflicted about it. Or I'm gonna defend her, but I feel conflicted about it. Or I'm, I'm the attacker, or whatever the things are, right? And love the way that very early on you start seeing people kind of stake out their individual relationship to the answer at the end of the game use that as a way to sort of define themselves in relation to everyone else
Kimi: Yeah, I agree. It's always fun, too, to play this for the first time with someone, because they don't necessarily have that, like, they know how it ends, because you go over the rules. You know, But they, access it in a very different way because they're not necessarily thinking that. They're focusing on the question in front of them, while people who've been playing a lot are, like, thinking, like, four steps ahead or trying to guess, okay, maybe I can do this, this, and this before the defend her card comes up and things like that. So it's, it's really interesting to also pull away and look at just what the card is itself too.
Because you're talking about and and this goes back to what we were saying about multiple play styles You're talking about people who ask follow up questions or why questions. And this is actually, and I think this is huge part of the mechanic, this is the one card in the deck that doesn't ask for information other than a yes or no.
Sam: Mm hmm.
Kimi: I'm a fourth grade teacher.
I've been in education for longer than I will admit to the public audience. good at, writing questions. I've taken classes on it. And there's always that question like, show this and explain why. So people share their thinking. And this deck does that in such a great way.
But the magic of the yes or no for the do you defend her card, it makes it feel final. No explanation is needed. And some groups totally go that way. I've also played games, even if they were really like descriptive and like, work, throwing things back and forth through the whole game, they get to that part and they're like, yes I do. No I don't. Yes I do. Yes I do. And that, that is sometimes even more powerful than, like, going through and describing things, because it's like, this is the end, and you all kind of just fill in those gaps, because in that moment, if the queen was really under attack, you know, no one really monologues in those moments, they're not going to be like, I am defending her because of blah blah blah, it's just like, boom, this is the moment.
And the game leaves it open that neither way is wrong, but there's that finality to, this is the one time you're not adding stuff to the story, necessarily.
Sam: Yeah. Ah. it really is this wonderful end of character arc for everyone in that way, because it's got that finality to it. And then it also ends the sort of character arc, or I guess the story arc of the whole group but it's also rarely like a clean ending, because you stop the game there, don't know quite what happens in the future, and you can all start speculating on that, but it feels like speculation in a way that I really love. I love that sort of open ended, We've concluded the important question, which was how does everyone feel about their relationship to the Queen? we don't need to know the events after that, we just need to know, like, how people felt in that moment.
Kimi: Yeah, it's a, it's like the, the perfect cliffhanger, like, oh, and then we're done. Mm
Sam: For the Queen really is a game so much about power, and love, and your relationship to this figure, the Queen, and by proxy, your relationship to everyone else in the little party that is accompanying her on this long and perilous journey to a distant power to broker a peace.
And this question all by itself establishes that, too? Like, everyone kind of gets immediately after they read this question, intuitively, that the game is about those power dynamics, and that they should be playing around with that. And it helps that every individual question in the game really, really reinforces that, maybe even more than this particular question.
But, again, I just love how clear this game is in not just what it is asking you to do, but like what ideas it is asking you to think about and consider and re evaluate over and over with every new question.
Kimi: there's so many questions that can be read multiple ways, like, When was the last time the Queen showed you real kindness? And that was maybe, maybe it was five minutes ago. Like, if you have a kind Queen that you're developing together maybe it was, years ago, when we were children and I've served her ever since. Like, there's so many avenues to go down.
But no matter what, the Queen is always the one who is really in power. Until that moment, again, at the end, where are you going to be the one, are you going to defend her? You know, because suddenly that's also the moment where you are the one in power and not the queen for the first time in the game.
And I don't know, I love that aspect of it too.
Sam: Yeah.
is there's one that's like, there's something on this journey that only you can do for the queen. What is it? And that clearly gives you some sort of power. Bualmost everyry answer to that question also comes with She doesn't really need you. Like, it'd be great if you did this, but like, you are lesser than her still. All you are is this one function that she needs done that no one else can do that gives you this power, but like, she's still the queen, you are still subservient to her, and that, I don't know, that's just, eh. It's just so Alex Roberts, to be honest.
Kimi: It really, yeah. And yeah, everything is so passive up to that point. Like, you are depowered by the very fact that you are describing things and information, but you can take no action on them. Which is so different than most RPG experiences, because so many RPGs are about what do you do in this moment, and this has nothing to do with that until the end.
Sam: It's all about how you feel. And that's, I love that because my favorite parts of RPGs are making hard decisions and reflecting on how you feel. And I love a game that is just an hour and a half of reflecting on how you feel in increasingly difficult circumstances, building up to a single excruciating choice.
Kimi: Yes.
Sam: That's just, that's the medium.
Kimi: good, yeah, it's all the feels, I love it. And one of the neat things about it is also the unpredictability of the whole thing. I know we're supposed to be focusing on that one mechanic, but as you're going through the story, you can't really, like, metagame or anything like that because you have no idea what card you're going to pull up next.
And you can X out cards if there's one that, you know, you've already answered or it doesn't feel like it fits or whatever like that. But, so it's like, oh, okay, you're, you're planning, oh, I'm gonna love the queen, she's gonna be the best, and then you flip over a card that's like, what did the queen do to make you hate her? and, just suddenly it changes the entire course of what you might have thought your character was.
And those are such amazing moments, because you get to feel those deep feelings, but you also have to be very nimble with them, and able to change course, and oh, okay, well, maybe I really loved her before, and then this one thing happened, and now I'm in a different place.
Sam: Yeah, that constant re evaluation is, I mean, that's what the game's about. I find it really compelling and interesting.
I was thinking about the tension, specifically, that builds up in that moment there's always a moment at the table. where you look at the deck and like everyone kind of feels it at the same time like how close are we to the end here? Someone will like pick up the deck and just sort of like look how many cards are left here and that feeling is also generated by this mechanic and I find that really, really compelling too, that like, in the same way that you are constantly reevaluating your relationship and like, building up the complexity there, you're also constantly ratcheting up the tension of every question is one step closer to what's gonna happen at the end, like she's, it's coming, like, like that feeling is so wonderful and created perfectly by this mechanic.
Kimi: You mentioned Ten Candles and that's such a great comparison because that's another game that you don't really have any control over the clock. It can take as long or as short as you want. Depends on what, you know, brand tea candles you buy, I guess, and how breezy the room is.
But with this, it's just there. There's always like this, this feeling of time. I guess, the feeling of not being in control of time and maybe being, running out of time. Which I think pairs so well with this, you know, is the Queen out of time? Like, are you going to defend her? is this where her story ends? But there's just like this great pressure there of, you just know it's going to happen.
Sam: Yeah.
So I talked about this when I had Mo Nuncio on to talk about travel in RPGs and Uncharted Worlds specifically, but a thing that I love that For the Queen does is you're, so you're on this journey as a group, you are going to broker an alliance with a distant power, and every card feels like a day or like a beat on the journey. Like, it feels like a moment of travel.
When you draw that first card, you know, you might be flashing back to 10 years ago, but implicitly you, you feel like you've just stepped out of the palace or whatever the queen's home is, and this is the thing that you're thinking about right now.
And once you're like, 30 questions in, you're like, we're deep in enemy territory, an attack could come at any moment. Like, we come a long way from home, and some of that happens literally on camera, so to speak, in the answering of the questions about the present day, but there are so many of these questions about the past and your history with the Queen, too, that it really does a good job of giving you that feeling of being on a road trip and reflecting on the past.
Kimi: Mm hmm.
Sam: And that's sort of a side effect of the basic mechanic of shuffling this card into the bottom of this deck, and I, I find that, it's such a remarkable slick little like, symptom of like a different mechanic really supporting the feeling of something else, it's doing so much, it's not accidental, but it feels accidental, and I admire that so much.
Kimi: Yeah, it's, yeah, it gets back to that, like, time thing, and you're right, like, I hadn't thought of it in that context before, but it does, it feels like beats. And you do, you start getting that, oh, we're about to be attacked, like, as you get farther and farther into the deck. Yeah, no, that's totally true, that's amazing. Yeah, and it's, I don't know, there's just, love elegance, mechanics and things that are simple, but still very effective.
I mean, who doesn't love mechanics like that, I guess? But, but yeah, like, if you can make something really simple that way, I feel like it's always so much more powerful. And, yeah, it's just, yeah, it's just brilliant. I love it.
Sam: I feel like the more things one mechanic is doing, it feels like the more meaning or emotion, like, comes in that one space and, like, hits you all at once. Because by the time you draw this question, it feels like you've been traveling for a long time, like you've built up all this history, you've been remembering about the Queen, you've been thinking about the future about the Queen, and finally, here it is, the final choice to make, what do you do, do you defend the Queen, and all of that really is coming from a single mechanic one time.
And like, a dice roll can get there through like the story building up to that point, but when like the mechanic itself has all of that embedded inside of it, it ensures that that moment is just packed with meaning, and I, that's, that's the shit, that's the give it.
Kimi: Well, I think it's also, whole design of all the mechanics in the game, they all lead up to this moment so perfectly. It's like this amazing ramp up to this climax of this card. And it's subtle, and it's it's a very gradual buildup, but behind every very simple mechanic in For the Queen, there are tons of these little micro mechanics that, you're not doing anything else, but just the design, the word choice, all those little things.
Yeah, exactly, all of that creates and like, has a ripple effect on other mechanics leading up to this great moment. And it's just this, like, so much planning involved. And it's just, it's just just this beautiful little through line, no matter how you play, you get this beautiful little timeline of a game that has this very emotional ending, and that's just so difficult to do.
Sam: yeah.
This episode of dissect splutter. It is sponsored by Oh Captain My Captain, a quick play RPG following the story of a legendary captain and their crew designed by James D'Amato and based on the innovative Descended from the Queen system created by Alex Roberts. Hey, look at that. Oh Captain My Captain can be learned in just 15 minutes and played to its end in under an hour. It's a perfect game for introducing new players to the hobby and with 50 prompts and four different ending questions, it's endlessly replayable. Oh Captain My Captain releases on September 22nd, but you can pre-order it now at bit.ly/ohcaptainrpg.
This episode of Dice Exploder it's brought to you by Starscape, a scifi tabletop RPG, where you're part of a Starship crew journey and through space, bonding through adversity, and becoming a found family.
Built on a powered by the apocalypse foundation with some fun additions, individual game sessions might focus on exploration obstacles are facing threats. Long-term the stories are about how the crews trust in each other changes. Star scape was created by golden lasso games. That's Kimi Hughes. cohost of this episode. And it is kick-starting right now, visit golden lasso games.com/kickstarter to download the Quickstart and check it out for yourself.
Now. Star scape. I want to talk about so in For the Queen, if the two of us are playing, there's Sam's relationship to the queen, there's Kimi's relationship to the queen, and those are really well thought out and explored. And we really get this interesting, clear picture of who the Queen is from a bunch of different angles, because everyone's relationship with her is different. It's almost like a Rashomon kind of effect, I love that.
But, I have found playing the game that the Kimi Sam relationship is really not explored typically. Like, it's really a lot lighter. There are some, a couple of questions maybe about it. I think maybe a couple got added in the new edition of the game that I haven't gotten my hands on yet. But like, I love that we're all exploring our relationship to the Queen, but I often do wish that there was more exploring our relationships to each other in For the Queen, too.
And on the one hand, I think that would take away from a lot of the clarity and single mindedness that I was just praising for a lot of other reasons, but after playing the game dozens of times, I, I'm always like looking for new stuff to do, and that is something I have found sometimes hard to make the game do, and I find, I find that interesting.
Kimi: Well, I think that's part of the design, because again, very different from other role playing games, the players are not the main character. Like, we are the supporting cast, we are the NPCs that, you know, give the quests or whatever. It is about the Queen, and all the questions that create those relationships between the players are things that still focus on the Queen.
So it's like, you have started a relationship with someone else, why are you hiding it, I think is one of the cards. So it's, it's still about the Queen's power over you. The minute you start to build up those relationships, you start One, taking action, so that it gets really hard to have PC PC relationships if you can't take any action.
Sam: that's true,
Kimi: So you know, that's a difficult thing to build up. You could do it in past tense questions, but again, it's not quite the same, I don't think.
Sam: yeah,
Kimi: And I think again, like the power of the Queen being so central and kind of the foundation core of this game. The minute you start having loyalties other than that, that don't revolve around her power over you and your resentment towards her or your service of her or your wanting to protect her or wanting to be her favorite or whatever that is. It starts pulling away from that really, really beautiful focus.
Sam: Totally. That's a great point, and I'm also very aware that like, you don't need the PC to PC relationship thing before you've played the game a dozen times, like some of us freaks. So yes. that is a great point.
Kimi: Yeah, I mean, I've, I've also done that, again, like, I've also played, so many times. And, we have done it where you were talking about indescribing and fleshing those things out a bit more that aren't necessarily part of what's on the card. I had a lover in one game who we'd gotten the card that was like, why are you hiding it from the queen or whatever it says.
And it ended up that we were the ones who betrayed the queen at the end and things like that together. So we had a little bit more because we took the initiative to add it in ourselves. So it can be done but again, I think everything's still revolving, around, you know, the bright sun or the, black hole that is your queen.
Um,
Sam: You don't want to distract from that too much.
Kimi: yeah, you don't, because then it starts pulling away from other people's stories. Because then when they get a card, are they going to start adding into your story like a good collaborative storyteller? Or are they, going to talk about the Queen again and just kind of ignore what's happening over there?
So that focus on the Queen also gives everyone a direction ahead. And it's hard to do that in a game where everyone's answering their own questions to herd of those cats in that direction and keep them all going and focused on a single, you know, storyline. I think that's really pivotal to that.
Sam: Yeah. I, several years ago, got it into my head, what would this game be like if someone at the table was the Queen? Like, played as the Queen? And I think that would be really interesting, also. And I made a hack of this game very early on in its life cycle, I was obsessed with it,
And my hack is like, you're D& D adventurers, someone in the party has been cursed, you're all traveling to some place to get that curse removed. And I was like, I'm making a game about being disabled. Like, I'm making a game about how your community changes when someone gets sick. I want someone to be in that role. And so I, I made that person a player at the table.
And that, I found that experience really different and interesting, and really effective for my game. Like, I, people really do feel the personalness of that. It feels relatable in a way where the queen is supposed to feel unrelatable. Like, it's clearly the right choice to have the queen not be a PC because she's this mythical figure that's like part of the whole premise of the game. But I also I have liked this hack where you mess with that particular choice in the game and like what that does to the system.
Kimi: Yeah, the power dynamic there.
It's interesting, too, because in For the Queen, the queen, it starts off neutral. Even if you pick a really scary looking picture, she can be a, you know, a wonderful person underneath. So, having that flexibility and having that build in with the story is something that I've seen like a lot of hacks and a lot of friends who are like inspired and they do like their partial hack or whatever and a lot of times that element's missing.
And if you start off the game with a prescribed, you know, friend or foe as the person that it's centered around, it's a very different experience because you don't have that fun, nebulous, kind of as people are feeling out the answers at the beginning, and like, well, am I gonna be the one to make her evil, or am I gonna make her good, and I don't know, there's a lot of power and enjoyment in the first couple rounds of the game as you're
settling into that.
Sam: Well, and playing out all those nuances, like, is the game. Like, that's what For the Queen is about. And if you take that away, if it's very clear that the figure we are building the game around is a horrible death knight that we're all going to kill, like, what's the game about instead? We better figure something else out to put in there.
Kimi: Yeah.
Sam: we have kind of moved into talking about hacks. you made a hack of this game? If so, what is that like? Or do you have any favorite hacks of this game? And what do you like about them?
Kimi: Oh, yeah. so I love Decaying Orbit by Sydney Icarus, who we were lucky enough to meet at Strategicon fairly recently. And basically Decaying Orbit really utilizes that time element we were talking about, and it's basically about a failing space station that's falling into a star. So in the same way you get the Queen is under attack, well you defend her and you know it's coming, there's like this inevitable end that's coming. You know? It's just really, it works beautifully with this, with this
Sam: Sydney did a interview on the Yes Indeed podcast with Thomas Manuel a couple of months ago, where they talked in detail about the design of Decaying Orbit and some of the choices they made on it, and I found that interview really, really compelling, so I definitely recommend people check that out too. have you made a For the Queen game?
Kimi: I have not made a For the Queen game. For the Queen very much was one of the games that inspired Decuma, which is, my pregame, like, session zero world building game. And that one, and then A Quiet Year is also something that really, like, fit in there and then, like, like, Microscope, there's, like, there's all these little things Companion's Tale, so it's, like, like, any good game designer, like, I took a lot of things I liked and, like, put them together and made a new thing,
Sam: every game I've ever made is a hack of For the Queen just because I put provocative questions in all my games now, right?
Kimi: I love that it, there is that kind of trend happening now, and not just with card based games, but, like, Wanderhome is very much about answering questions, and it's, like, involved in that, and I've started utilizing a lot more question things to build characters and for character sheets and things like that. It's just, it's so easy and space effective, like, as you're designing character sheets, that matters a lot. And again, as a teacher, it's just something I'm very comfortable with, and I'm really good at writing a question that gets a specific thing, because I've been doing it for so many years,
and it's just, simplifies things. People can know how to answer questions. We've all always done it. So as you go through and you answer questions, you create something without having to stress about it. You don't have to count the number of points or make decisions. You know, there's parameters. And I know you were talking in, I think, one of the more recent episodes about how sometimes having limits actually increases creativity.
I don't know if that's a recent episode or just the most recent episode I've been listening to because I've kind of been going back to the old
Sam: it's a Mark Rosewater quote and I talk about it all the goddamn time.
Kimi: perfect.
So, and I think that really helps if you have a very specific question that has very specific parameters, there's going to be more creativity there. People are going to still try and make it their own without just having like a blank box where it's like, describe yourself.
Sam: Yeah.
Kimi: Okay. Okay.
Sam: the formula of, like, establish a truth about the world or your character that we didn't know before now, but leaving space for you to incorporate that in whatever way you want, like we learn there's something that you do for the queen that only you can do. What is it? Like, there's a very clear box that you have to answer this question in. It's a big definition around your character, what your character's role is here. But, there's also still a ton of room for you to play, and bounce off the walls of that question, and leap over the walls of that question, like, every question in this game, I feel like I could do a five minute episode on.
Kimi: Absolutely, and they are very exact and get very specific information from you while being really general so that you can take it either way. One of my favorite cards is the queen lights a fire in you. What is it? And that's such general phrasing that maybe it's a fire of love. Maybe it's a fire of anger and hatred
Sam: I've played with the golem who was run by fire that the queen lit.
Kimi: Yeah, there's so many ways to take that. So you know it's about a big emotion. Your character is going to be very affected by whatever it is because it's a fire in you. You have to describe what it is that creates that feeling in you, but that feeling can be so many different things. I mean, it's just like this perfect amount of space to take it either way.
Cause that's the beauty of all the cards too, cause all the cards have to work, whether she's great or whether she's terrible or whether she's mediocre or whatever she is, every card has to work for that. And as someone who's written a card game and, like, gone through all the years of playtesting every single question to make sure every single question works, I am just blown away by that specific piece.
Like, what brings out the Queen's kindness? She could be a terrible necromancer, and there's, like, one thing, like, it just, it, that takes so much work to get such specific information, while still leaving people plenty of room to follow the fiction that they've been collaboratively creating with their group.
Sam: yeah.
The last thing that I'll say about this that we've kind of already touched on is this game feels so easy to hack. Like, all you have to do is write new questions. And writing questions is a real skill. I've read some For the Queen hacks that are not good because the questions are not very good. But it is also true that it's really easy to just get out there and write 40 questions about your premise, and that's wonderful. Like, I love that all those hacks exist. There's just so many hacks in this format because it's so easy,
but really if you are listening to this and you are looking to get started in game design and you have any kind of idea for a way to make your own version of this format of game, I highly recommend it. It's a great way to to make something that's pretty good, like, it is it is hard to make something that's truly unplayable here, right? You're answering questions is fun, even if you aren't Alex Roberts, hitting a grand slam on every question, but like, this is such a great place to start as a game designer.
It's so reliable. It's so effective. It's so flexible. Go make yourself a Descended from the Queen game.
Kimi: Absolutely, yeah, and it's, it's great to playtest. Like the graphical elements, if you end up wanting to like, put it online somewhere, like, very minimal, you can do a great job.
Sam: StorySynth. org is this website that has this amazing toolset for just running For the Queen games right in your browser using a Google spreadsheet that you've created ahead of time to list all the questions. And it looks beautiful, it makes your game look great. Check it out.
Kimi: so good, yeah. And, and, and. There are so many amazing possibilities of stories to tell like this, because, you know, of something that's powerful, that a lot of, you know, people are, are, you know, orbiting around, or following, or just, like, the center of so much activity, and it could be a thing, it could be a person, it could be a place, it could be all these different things, and mixing that with just, like, an element of time, those are such simple elements that are part of pretty much every story in some way.
Let
Sam: Yeah.
Alright, well I haven't answered, the queen is under attack, do I defend her yet? I'm not gonna defend her fuck the queen, she can die by my hand tonight for what she did. And with that, we'll bring this episode to a close.
Kimi: absolutely.
Sam: Thanks again to Kimmy for being here. Again, you can find her game star scape on Kickstarter. Right now. There's a link in the show notes. If you want to hear from the designer of, For the Queen, Alex Roberts, you can find an episode I did with her in the Dice Exploder archives. It is one of my absolute favorites, much like her game. And I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't.
Once again, you can vote for Dice Exploder in the ENnies. There's a link in the show notes. And I'm running a BackerKit campaign for season four right now you can find a link in the show notes. If you love the show. and you have money to spare, give it to me.
As always, you can find me on socials at S Dunnewold or on the dice Exploder discord.
Our logo was designed by sporgory. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray and our ad music is Lily Pads by my boy, Travis Tesmer. And thanks to you for listening. We'll see you next week.