Who else is designing a Descended From The Queen game?

#22

Months before I heard about For the Queen, I made a game that looks alike, with prompt cards (based on The Beast, at the time). It had three acts, with different themes and prompts, getting the story crescendo.
You can get a beta there : https://www.gulix.fr/blog/2017/02/23/apres-laccident-beta-2/ (in french and in english)

It’s designed for Solo Play, and the manipulation of the deck is more complex than in a standard For The Queen game. I intend to get back to this game in the coming months, using some things I learned while playing/designing For The Queen and hacks.

What I can say is by getting different Ages / Acts / Seasons, the layout of the game on the table becomes more complex. If you assemble the deck right away (Act 1 on top of Act 2 on top of Act 3), you lose some mechanisms (putting the end in the middle of the deck for short play) or need to add some layer to deck constitution (draw X cards from each Act, then assemble your deck …).

Also, you may need some transition between Acts if their content is different. Especially if your Acts cards have different back. If not, it can be a hassle to assemble the cards by acts (you need to look at the front, and loose the surprise of the questions at the first game).

For the Queen is really an easy to play game, easy to explain, easy to launch game. Adding any level of complexity (Acts, Characters profiles, different endings …) takes you away from that “easy-going” feel of the game. But that can be intended !

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#23

I would love to jump on this design train someday.

Going to try something new at a convention in a couple weeks where we stitch Questlandia (world building) + The King Is Dead + For the Queen + Questlandia (character play).

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#24

…and now it exists, in extremely rough form. But I’ve made the mistake of writing a game I don’t actually want to play, so there likely won’t be an update. Unless maybe the ugliness of the art bothers me enough to replace it.

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#25

For the Lead - members of an ensemble acting troupe, except the lead.

Could be Hamilton, could be 13th century minstrels. The final card is “The Curtain raises, do you support the lead?”

This one you could port most of the cards from the FtQ deck.

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#26

This worked out really nicely at MinnLoCo.

#27

I would be interested in reading about how you stitched these together… perhaps as a new topic?

#28

Done. :slight_smile:

https://forums.gauntlet-rpg.com/t/monarchy-games-at-a-long-con/3535

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#29

I’ve been thinking on how to make my own DftQ game since this thread first showed up, but I can’t seem to come up with a workable idea. I want to make something that is different enough to feel meaningful for me, which means moving away from “companions exploring their relationship to a central figure and deciding whether to stand by them” in some way but that part is so core to the FtQ experience that I have a hard time coming up with ideas.

So maybe… the players are the gods who created humanity or the world, and in the rnd they have to decide if they… destroy it, or leave, or something.

Or they are various minor spirits or knytt (there doesn’t seem to be a good English word for this; basically minor supernatural creatures from Nordic folklore) living on or around a farm and they have to decide if they will stay on to help the next generation of the family living there.

Or maybe people living in a post-apocalyptic settlement who have to decide on staying or going out into the wastes to look for something better.

Hm. Maybe I do have some ideas after all…

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#30

Or make it a two-player game about two people in a relationship who have to decide if they’re going to stay together.

Or members of a family who have to decide if they’re going to a dead relative’s funeral. (That’s kind of close to FtQ but it could have a fairly different mood, I think.)

Or game developers in a small startup who are being recruited by a bigger company who have to choose to stay with their possibly doomed dream project or opt for more money but a mundane job.

Okay, okay, enough with the ideas. Time to get to work.

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#31

Wow, this could be amazing. I can see a couple sitting outside their lawyer’s office deciding whether to divorce or not.

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#32

Having done that IRL, it doesn’t sound like fun

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#33

A lot of things we do in games aren’t fun in real life, and not all games are about having fun.

#34

True but I will get my bleed elsewhere!!

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#35

That sounds like a wise choice.

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#36

Two more ideas that popped into my head when I started structuring the ones above that I can’t resist posting here because I want someone to make them, whether that’s me or someone else:

The players are revolutionaries who have to decide whether to stay loyal to the movement when the time comes for action.

The players are characters close to a superhero - sidekicks, not-really-villain rivals, team mates from long ago - who they have asked to take over for them when they retire. Do they pick up the cowl or not?

That’s it; no more before I have a prototype of something. Promise.

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#37

Aaand I’ve whipped up a version of the Hero’s Successors which I think you can view and comment on here. (I’m not an expert on using Google Drive so let me know if there’s something wrong with the link.)

It’s just first draft card texts in a spreadsheet so far, basically brainstormed text, so I’ll be grateful for any input. I think it should be possible to comment on the document - again, not a Google expert.

Since it will probably be a while before I get the chance to playtest any of these ideas, I think I’ll make first drafts of a few more to see which ones pass that test.

Sorry to hijack the thread with this, BTW. I guess I’ll start a new thread if something passes the first playtest stage.

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#38

I am very keen on the revolutionaries idea and their relationship to the faction rather than a person.

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#39

Finished a first rough sketch of the revolutionaries game. Link.

Now I’ll scoot off to a thread of my own, I think.

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#40

My game about racers, in any kind of fast and dangerous races, is just released.
It’s called “Final Lap”, and it’s available as a Print N Cut file.

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#41

Hi !

I’m also super excited about DftQ becoming a new genre :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:
When I discovered For the Queen in march, I was frustrated because I do not know how to use Roll20. I wondered how to play to FTQ without Roll20, and so I created forthedrama.com.

It started as a little tool for playing online with my friends, but now it transformed itself in a community where we exchange new games ideas, new way to change FTQ narrative schema.

Also : I was inspired a lot by PBTA game when I created my first DftQ game For My Companions : https://www.forthedrama.com/games/pmc
I think there are many ideas to take from PBTA design.

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