Who else is designing a Descended From The Queen game?

#42

Your site is awesome!

2 Likes
#43

Thank you so much @Deckard ! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

#44

I put together a DFTQ hack today:

forthefandom
forthefandom778×583 98.3 KB

For the Fandom is a game about how the next installment to your next favorite series goes terribly wrong, and how a crew of filmmakers fall apart making that film.

You can play it on For the Drama!

Thank you @Matthieu_b for creating such a wonderful and innovative tool!

Please let me know if you have had a chance to try it and your thoughts. I know there are some spelling and grammatical mistakes - my bad, but please let me know!

6 Likes
#45

I am planning at offering all the For the Drama games for face to face play at Dreamation in February. I think we can do at least two games per 4h slot. If anyone wants to contribute a game (by Feb 14), I will pass the hat for the designer.

6 Likes
#46

Hi all !

In the last weeks of 2019, there have been many new DftQ games made by game designer, but also by people for whom it was a first experience making a game :

  • Pour l’équipage : a pirate themed game
  • Pour quelques bons points de plus : an Harry Potter like game, but that’s all about hormones
  • Humanitaire a game about the functioning of an NGO
  • Pour mon lycée - a testimony and a satire of what it is to be a teacher today in France.
  • Pour les beaux yeux de Lou a game on polyamory
  • Cet instant précis - a samurai duel about lost friendship and feelings

I’m so happy with the creative momentum For the queen has created !
I can’t wait to see what 2020 has in store for us :slight_smile:

4 Likes
#47

Here are some templates I made for DFTQ games inspired by For the Drama:

PDF
inDesign

The templates are designed for standard American 8.5 x 11" paper, 12 cards to a sheet, 2x3" per card.

My process is to come up with groups of 12 questions on a word document and then just copy and paste them into the inDesign file as needed.

Happy Hacking!

2 Likes
#48

Here’s a link to a Google Sheets template. I’m hoping you can “save as” to your own Google Drive and edit accordingly.

Google Sheets

1 Like
#49

Happy to announce that my Descended from the Queen game For This Ungrateful City is now available for playtesting on ForTheDrama. Tell a story of a team of superheroes asked to defend a city that may not deserve it!

4 Likes
#50

Hey all — Just started my own DftQ game and I’m curious to hear about your approaches. How do you conceive of questions? What does playtesting look like for you?

On one hand, it’s such a simple game that design feels easy and straightforward, but the flipside is that I’m having a hard time sensing whether I’m headed in the right direction or not. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

I suspect the answer is just playtest, repeatedly, but anyone else have any other thoughts?

1 Like
#51

I chose two to four strong aspects I want to see in my game, and I focus around them. Each prompt must at least follow one of them. And I playtest. If some cards is misused, or Xed too many times, I remove/rewrite it. Also, I solo-test multiple “settings” to see if the game can have a broad approach.

3 Likes
#52

Interesting!

When you say “aspects,” do you mean themes?

So like in For the Queen, it might be:

  • The Queen is worthy of your love.
  • The Queen is terrible and unworthy of your love.
  • The Queen complicates your relationship with the other members of the retinue.

I like the idea of solo-testing different settings. That’s something I’m thinking a lot about!

#53

Similar to @Gulix I organized cards around certain aspects of the fiction. My game is about sages performing a ritual that will seal a great evil away. So I divided my questions into a few groups of 8 cards each. The Ritual (questions about the ritual itself and it’s workings) ; The Other Sages (questions about other players, all of these sew mistrust) ; The Darkness (flesh out the evil in the game and show why some might welcome it) ; The Past (world building and character building questions, often things that characters are hiding) ; Hopes and Fears ( Flesh out motivations for the sages, sew seeds of epilogue material) It makes the whole creativity part a lot easier when you shrink the cognitive load from “Make up 52 great questions!” to “What are eight questions about the other players that will make them not trust each other?”

For future games I’ll probably create even more categories than I plan to use, and then edit down with play testing. It’s super easy to edit these games because removing cards from a deck or adding new ones in is simple.

4 Likes
#54

That’s that. For Final Lap, after a few games that were OK but didn’t get the feel I wanted, I reviewed the questions with those themes in mind:

  • camaraderie amongst pilots
  • this race is dangerous
  • the cost of winning

I’m currently paused in designing my reporter’s game “The Case that will make the Headline”, but here are the themes I’m looking into:

  • we’re all competing, but on the same side
  • obsession
  • truth or glory?

I also got three broad categories : the McGuffin (the Champion in the first one, the Case in the second), the Others (player characters), Yourself. And I try to get a balance between each.

4 Likes
#55

Hello all !

The community behind For The Drama made some kind of guide, a method for creating a DftQ games with some guidelines and advices that worked for us.

I made a really quick & dirty translation of this method, you can find it here : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jWzkpSWZIzZjgsEX5e0lCd8PfPUSIgNFVvGgllSYu8A/edit?usp=sharing

The original in french : https://www.cestpasdujdr.fr/une-methode-pour-ecrire-un-jeu-comme-for-the-queen/

I hope this will help you!

It is of course just a suggestion: other methods certainly work just as well or better. I am interested in your feedback on this subject.

6 Likes
#56

This guide is great. Because the game’s so light mechanically, it can be tough to see the thematic design that goes into the questions. Thank you!

4 Likes
#57

Exactly the problem I was running into! It’s so easy to start (Oh, I just make up some questions!) but then when you get into it, it’s actually much trickier to get a sense of whether you’re making up the right questions.

On that note: If anyone wants to give my extremely alpha draft a glance or playthrough, it’s now on For the Drama: https://forthedrama.com/games/treasure (Thanks, @Matthieu_b!)

Here’s the background:

Somewhere far from here, there is a Treasure. There are other treasures, but this one is uniquely precious.

The journey to recover the Treasure is long and perilous. Many have tried and failed.

You, and only you, have decided to venture forth together to recover the Treasure.

Each of you has your own reason for seeking the Treasure, but all of you would rather die than return empty-handed.

The hope is that the game explores D&D/Indiana Jones-style treasure hunting through a DftQ lens, to examine why people hunt for treasure in the first place and how we decide that we deserve to have what others do not.

6 Likes
#58

Hi everyone! I follow the gauntlet forum for quite some time now.
I really appreciate the conversations here and would love to get some insights from you.

I just finished the first draft my DftQ Game “For The Lost Island”. And @Matthieu_b was kind enough to publish it on his website: https://www.forthedrama.com/games/lostisland
For The Lost Island is a game about a group of surviors trying their best after they crashed on an lost island - in the veins of lord of the flies or the name giving tv series “lost”.
This is a game about exploration. Exploration of the island as well as the exploration of the emotions of this group of individuals.

Here are some points I would love to get some feedback from you:

  • I´m not happy about the intro text, yet. What images does it provoke in you? What would you rather change?
  • Same for the final question. It is really hard for me to nail that one down …
  • As english is not my first language, I´m concerned if my questions/prompts are phrased neutral enough. For example in German there is the neutral word “Person” -> person. But I´m not sure which pronoun to use with it, to indicate I mean the neutral status. Is “she” correct? Sorry, if that sounds to confusing. If so, please ignore that point :sweat_smile:
  • There are some questions about themes like death or physical attraction. Which not everyone will feel comfortable about. Do you think it would be a good idea to mark those questions in some way? Like a # or sth. like that? If so, which questions you would consider?
  • Do you feel that some of the prompts are to restrictive? If so, which ones?
  • Got a better name for the game? Please let me know :slight_smile:

Here is the intro text, as it stands for now, so that you get an idea of what I had in mind for the game:

You were in good spirits when you boarded the small plane of flight 815.
Despite that silly Friday the 13th.
Even the small turbulences in between were by no means alarming.
But a blizzard in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle?
A short time later the engines fail.
First came the silence. Then the panic. Then came the darkness.
The fact that you survived the crash is a miracle.
You’re on this island now.
Waiting.
Hoping.
On what?

Thanks for your time. If you have any questions, I´m happy to answer them :blush:

1 Like
#59

Lost is one of my favorite shows, so this is right up my alley. I just read through the cards and I dig it!

To answer your specific questions:

  1. I think the intro text is a little too playful, with the Friday the 13th and Bermuda Triangle references. I might draw on Lost here and keep it very simple. Something like: “1: You wake up to the squawks of seagulls and the scent of briny air. You’re on a beach?” "2: Suddenly, it all comes back to you. The sudden storm. The cabin depressurization. Your plane hurtling toward the ground. " “3. The fact that you survived is a miracle.” “4. Now you’re on this island.” “5. Waiting.” “6. Hoping for another miracle.”

  2. The final question is a tough one. I think it needs to be a more pointed question. Maybe “Do you leave the island or stay?”

  3. I would use “they” rather than “she”. They has become very common as a neutral pronoun and in some of the cards, particularly the romantic ones, “she” felt like it created weird assumptions.

  4. I wouldn’t worry about marking uncomfortable questions — that’s why you have the x-card. If you’re concerned, I might put it in the instructions when you describe the X-card. “Some cards have themes like death or attraction that might make you uncomfortable. This is one situation where you can use the x-card.” or whatever.

  5. I would need to go through them again, but overall they all felt very thematic and on point to me on the first read.

  6. Maybe just “The Lost Island”? Sometimes we get too caught up in following the naming convention of the original game. I don’t think it needs a “For the” if you don’t want it.

One thing I’ll also add is that I’d love to see you find some additional influences for the game. I love Lost, but I worry that you might be leaning on it too heavily. I worry that I might end up recreating scenes and ideas from the show instead of exploring my own. Maybe you could add some prompts that explicitly go in directions that lost didn’t go? Some other lost island fiction to draw on, just off the top of my head: Castaway, Tomb Raider, Myst.

Very excited to see where this goes though!

3 Likes
#60

Hi @SamR,

thank you so much for your detailed answer. This is much appreciated. Sorry for my late response!

  1. You are totally right about the intro. I wanted to keep a lighter tone, but you are right in changing it the way you suggested. I was also thinking to phrase it a bit more generic. So that the group could decide how they “stranded”: plane, ship, spaceship or other. Would be “wreck” a neutral way to phrase it?

  2. Yes, that´s a tough one. I got the chance to playtest the game last week and my players liked the one as presented. I don´t think “Do you leave the island or stay” is aiming towards the questions/emotions I would like to provoke with my prompts. I would argue that 90% will say they´re leaving. My goal was to carefully choose questions who could be interpreted in a positive or negative way - depending on the few on the world of the character. But none of the questions - I think - would built a kind of utopia, so that sb. really wanted to stay on the island.
    What do you think?

  3. I will change it to “they” than. Thank you!

  4. Yes, that sounds right to me as well.

  5. Thank you for your suggestion about the additional influences. Thats a really good suggestion. Maybe insperation strikes me and I will change some of the questions. For example the one where a stranger joins the group. I´m not a fan of that one. Did you have some other particular questions in mind which are “recreating” scenes of the show. (To be fair I only watched season 1 and 2, so I might as well just have drawn form standard tropes here :slight_smile:)

  6. The Lost Island sounds cool! It reminds me a bit more of a pulp fiction title. But maybe thats because I had a look at your Dino Island game (which sounds awesome by the way)

  7. While playtesting I also realized that the questions about the group splitting up would be really hard to answer as the first or even the third card. In our game the second question was the one with a person coming and holding your hand. The player did a really good job in describing/answering it. But I think that is an other one which is kind of hard to answer as the first, second or third question - But I really like that question, to be honest :wink:

Once again, thank you for taking time to answer my questions and have a look at “my” game. That means a lot to me.

1 Like
#61

@Gulix, I wanted to mention that on a recent road trip to St. Louis, I ran a game of Final Lap from my phone with my 13 and 11 yr old kids. My 13 yr old is at the age where everything dad likes is lame and my 11 yr old avoids looking up from his Switch BUT Final Lap was simple and interesting enough to run this while my wife drove and everyone enjoyed it. That makes your game a rare jewel in my house full of games.

5 Likes