I Played: For the Queen

For the Queen, by Alex Roberts, made for the smoothest oneshot I’ve ever played. It took less than five minutes to jump into play, and the whole game wrapped up in under an hour. At no point does the game stop to ask you to come up with a name, or describe an elaborate backstory, or act out a scene. There’s really just one mechanic: draw, read prompt, answer prompt.

The game takes the form of a single deck of cards. The rules are cards (the first dozen or so cards in the deck, intended to be read aloud in a circle). The fourteen included illustrations of various Queens are cards. There’s an X Card. The rest of the cards are prompts. No extra materials are required. This has the neat side effect of making it super portable; I stuck it in my sling bag on a whim and almost forgot I was carrying it. Once we wanted to play, all it took was opening the deck and taking turns reading the rule cards. Then we were set to tell the story of a treacherous journey.

Our group discussed nothing about the Queen beforehand, other than choosing her appearance. We didn’t even name our characters before drawing the first set of prompts. In a hobby where my default mode is two-to-four hour marathons fueled by meticulous preparation, this was a breath of fresh air. After our first complete round, we had discovered that our party consisted of a master tailor, a disgruntled advisor, a ceremonial houseplant, a political exile, and a newspaper reporter. Over time it came out that the exile was actually the Queen’s son, the tailor newly elevated after their master had been executed, and the advisor plotting the Queen’s downfall. Some of this was directly prompted by the game, and some was invented by the players. When we reached the last card in play…

The Queen is under attack, do you defend her?

…all but one of us betrayed the Queen. The formerly exiled prince took up a sword to defend his mother and was struck down; the advisor was killed by the attack she helped engineer. The master tailor, tipped off by the advisor, slipped into the night. The houseplant was taken as loot by enemy soldiers. The reporter broke the story of the Queen’s capture back home. And that’s it!

With just one session, I can’t make any definitive statement about For the Queen. I’m not sure how many times the magic trick would work. Even in our one game, some cards felt a little repetitive (one character started with a prompt asking why they have already betrayed the Queen, and later received another asking why they hated the Queen). Maybe repeat play sessions would fail to recapture the original spirit as prompts grow familiar, but at least right now I’d gladly play again. Playing with just prompts cuts away crunchy mechanics, scene-setting, and even dialogue from gaming. What you’re left with is just decision-making: how do I respond to this prompt? And eventually, do I betray the Queen?