For the Queen is a collaborative card-driven game about the retinue of a certain Queen, and how they feel about her, each other, and themselves. The gist of the game is that while the Queen can be kind, she is also capable of some pretty awful acts, and it’s about your relationship with a person with power over you.

Sounds like Doctor Who to me! So what did I do with it?

First, I wanted to validate that the idea itself was sound. I built a Notion page with all the original card prompts, then started marking the questions that just made no sense in the Doctor Who canon. Only about 10% of the cards couldn’t really fit - so far so good.

Second, I changed the focus a little bit. This time, the relationship is less toxic, more about how you stand up to someone who gives you validation and support. I’m still working on tightening that theme, but I think I’m making progress.

You can play the work in progress on Story Synth. Visit https://storysynth.org/Upload/ and select the “Shuffled” game format, then give it this Google Sheet link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MmHXh47c2DR7gVYLQ-KEfAlVRj-DsFvQTxEMHWr1bJY/edit?usp=drive_link

That will start a new session of the game.

The remaining work is to rewrite the instructions, to dial in what I want to do with the game. There’s also a dozen or less prompts that I still want to refine. But those edits will all go on this same Google Sheet link.