For the Queen’s creator on the new edition, her many copycats, and her balloon-kink RPG

If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, Alex Roberts’ For the Queen might be the most lavishly complimented game in indie role-playing game history. First published in 2019 by Evil Hat Productions, the company behind Fate, Blades in the Dark, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Monster of the Week, and Apocalypse Keys, among many other games, For the Queen was an immediate sensation among indie tabletop fans. It’s a no-prep, no-GM storytelling game that’s designed to build high drama and deep emotion quickly: Players create their characters through play by drawing from a deck of narrative prompt cards that let them build a fraught, conflicted relationship with the enigmatic queen they love and serve. The best proof that Roberts’ design is appealing and inviting? It’s inspired a huge wave of independent, self-published copycat games.

Roberts, also the creator of Star Crossed and many other indie RPGs, published For the Queen under a Creative Commons license, giving other creators the right to make their own structurally similar RPGs under the label Descended From the Queen. Those games vary immensely in tone, content, and intent, but they all credit Roberts’ work as their inspiration, which has just bolstered For the Queen’s reputation further.

For the Queen now has an expanded, updated second edition that was released by Critical Role’s publishing house, Darrington Press. Polygon caught up with Roberts via Zoom to talk about what the new edition of For the Queen adds and changes, why she wants to do an explicit adults-only version of the game, how she feels about the dozens of RPGs she’s inspired (and which ones she recommends), and why the highlight of her career was designing a LARP about kinky balloon fetishists.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

Image: Darrington Press

Polygon: Why did you move For the Queen from Evil Hat to Darrington Press?

Alex Roberts: For the Queen was the last boxed game Evil Hat put out. Since then, they have been doing exclusively books. When they made that change, For the Queen was 80% done, so they finished it, which was nice — but it was almost on the chopping block, actually. Some people within the company advocated for it, so I was very happy that they put it out at all. It has been a little indie success, or critical success, or something, so that’s been really nice, but obviously, over the years — I think they were not displeased when I was like, “I’ve been chatting with other publishers about the possibility of someone else putting it out.”

There was a lot of love for the game internally, but — I don’t want to say they didn’t know what to do with it, but it was just not really in-line with where they put their efforts. You could get it in specialty game shops, but you couldn’t get it more broadly. And it’s kind of a role-playing game, but it’s also kind of not. So it was in a weird section of their website. Basically, I had been wanting to do a second edition or an expansion, and I kind of thought Evil Hat wasn’t going to be down for that.

A friend of mine at Darrington said “Hey, we’re looking to publish more games, do you maybe want to do something with us?” In the summer of 2022, they had tagged me into work on Till the Last Gasp, a two-player game I did some design work on. So I’d had a good experience working with them. When Darcy Ross, their marketing manager, reached out to me and said “You want to do something else? Maybe we could publish an Alex Roberts game?” I was like, “I’ve actually been looking for maybe a new publisher for a second edition of For the Queen.” And [Darrington head] Ivan Van Norman emails me right away. Basically, the response was, “Yes. We are huge fans.” I know a couple of the Critical Role folks are big fans of For the Queen, and they jumped on it. There was just so much enthusiasm for the game on their side that it was very easy to be like, “Okay, great, let’s go!”

Image: Darrington Press

What did you want to address with a second edition? What needed changing or expanding?

For the most part, it was about expanding. I wanted to write more cards. I wanted to write new prompts. People tell me the game has a lot of replayability — there’s enough randomization and enough ambiguity in the questions that nobody ever answers a question the same way twice. But I have been playing that game a lot since it was a pile of notecards in a little purse. I would write new cards and take some out — I played it so much in playtesting and promoting it, playing it with different people. I knew I wanted new things in it. My personal copy had new, handwritten cards in it. So I mostly wanted to add to it.

But there were also certain things in the rules — the way the “pass” mechanic is phrased always seems to cause stumbles, often enough that I don’t like it. There were one or two cards — they’re supposed to be ambiguous and interpretive, but one or two sometimes made players scratch their heads, or stop play for a second. And I know it’s perfectly normal for people playing a board game to be reading through the rules and have to stop and go, “Wait, what does that mean?” and maybe Google it or something. I know that’s totally fine. But I hate it! Not in my game. I wanted it to be smooth as silk; I just want it to flow.

So there were a few little things I wanted to change, and there was so much to add. And then on top of that, Darrington was like, “We want twice as many queen illustrations in the second edition.” There are like 25 queens in the new edition. The first one, I think, had 12 or 15. And that’s so exciting to me, especially because everyone who has the first edition will still have all of their original queens that they love, and they get to add more.

Image: Darrington Press

Does the new edition have more prompt cards, or just tweaked, different prompts?

More. I think there were only two questions I took out, and then there are 10 new ones that I added. And some of them have been rephrased.

You’ve mentioned wanting to do expansions of the game as well. What did you have in mind?

That’s definitely something I still want to do. For the Queen fans should buy this game a lot, so that there’s every economic reason to let me simply write prompt cards for the rest of my life. There are a couple of expansions I would really like to do. In my mind, I just want to do more prompts, but if I really thought about it, I’m sure I could also introduce new mechanics to the game. Theoretically, you could make a different setup — imagine the same questions about the queen, but instead of being on a journey to a distant power to broker an alliance in a time of peril, you’d be doing something else.

I’d love to do an adults-only expansion that really emphasizes your more intimate relationship with the queen, where cards could be quite explicit. Obviously, there’s always an intense power dynamic between player characters and the queen, and people, for lack of a better term, get horny about that! So people bring that to the game. But I also know people play with their kids. Kids understand profound power dynamics in a different way — they understand it, and they can play with it, let me tell you — but I would love to be able to write cards that are not for kids. [Laughs] And that explore that more explicitly.

I also think it would be interesting to write questions that were specifically about rebellion — say, that assume some of you are planning to betray the queen, and maybe you can have ambiguous feelings about that. Or ones specifically suited to a particular setting — like ones that assume you’re in space, and she’s a spaceship queen.

I would love to make more Descended from the Queen games, and do sequels to For the Queen. I already have some sequels in progress. But part of me just wants to release booster packs, like Pokémon cards.

Image: Darrington Press

Both editions of For the Queen are so built around aesthetics, particularly the sleek custom game boxes. If you started releasing booster packs, wouldn’t you have to rethink how the game is boxed and packaged?

In the alternate universe where For the Queen is as popular as Magic: the Gathering or something, [I imagine] people are deck-building, and they have their custom decks, and their own boxes for them. Whenever I’m working on a prompt-based game, I like to put [the working copy] in a cute little purse or makeup bag. So everyone could have their own little pet deck. But that’s really pie-in-the-sky thinking. I would just love to be able to write more for this game, and give people the option to expand on the experience and take it in new directions.

The Descended from the Queen phenomenon is such a unique aspect of this game, with so many other people using this engine to create their own games. What was the original conversation like in terms of putting the game out under a Creative Commons license?

To me, there was no reason to not do it, or not support it. The thing is, nobody needs my permission to make a game that is functionally Descended from the Queen. It’s just a bunch of cards. And it’s not like For the Queen is the first game to use that format. For a lot of people, it’s the first one they’ve encountered. But there’s quite a tradition to have a game in a deck of cards. There’s a game called 183 Days; my gosh, it’s a fantastic game. It’s beautiful. It’s a little more complex than For the Queen, because eventually, the deck gets split into two, and it’s all very procedural.

And one of my favorite live-action role-playing games of all time, the one I recommend to first-time LARPers, is Jason Morningstar’s Juggernaut. You just pull the first card and it tells you what to do, but then some of those cards end up belonging to a machine that tells the future. It’s a great piece of tech.

The most obvious antecedent of For the Queen is Aleksandra Sontowska’s The Beast, a one-player RPG where basically, you find a monster and bring it home, and slowly, over the course of the game, you develop a sexual relationship with it. It’s very different content than For the Queen, and it’s about journal prompts rather than questions and follow-up questions and For the Queen’s group dynamic. But I played it and loved it, and it was a big influence on me.

So encouraging people to make games inspired by For the Queen — people are gonna do it. I love that they do it. Why not support it? If there’s some kind of commercial or business aspect to that decision, I’m sure it exists. I just know I’m stoked when people approach me and say, “I made a game because of your game.” So I really just genuinely want to encourage that.

Image: Darrington Press

I’ve seen authors similarly say they love fanfic inspired by their work — but they also often say they can’t read it, whether for legal reasons, or because they can’t have someone else’s version of their characters taking up space in their heads. Have you played many Descended from the Queen games?

I embrace it in theory. The first Descended from the Queen game — which was a bit like Monsterhearts was to Apocalypse World — I think that started before For the Queen was even out. It’s called Reunion, by Jenn Martin, Andy Munich, and Yoshi Creelman. All three of them are For the Queen fans, and I think Reunion was originally conceived as “the retinue of For the Queen is coming back, years later.” The prompts are all in the sense of “Do you remember that time? Remember how this used to happen?” I’ve gotten to play that, and I really love it. Partially because it innovates on the format in interesting ways — you actually pull questions and ask them of someone else, rather than answering them yourself. It has a very distinct relationship with time, where For the Queen has an ambiguous relationship with time. So that one’s great.

So is Keepers of the Cards. That one’s kind of a Cardcaptor Sakura fan game, which makes sense, [given the importance of] the clow cards, right? And there’s one called Descending the Stairs about a venue that’s closing, and you’re there on its last night, so you’re having this very specific relationship with time. So in theory, I’m all about it. In practice… I have a once-a-month RPG meetup, and when I’m there, I want to play something very new. I play a little bit outside of that. Someday I’ll go to a gaming convention again. So I’d love to play more Descended from the Queen games, but my priority is to play something that feels really new to me. All of us have our white-whale games. Someday I’d love to play West End’s Star Wars game, just once.

What’s the status of your spinoff game For the Cube?

[Laughs] For the Cube is a game that 75% of the time, works like magic and people love it, and then the rest of the time, it doesn’t quite hit right. So it’s still in playtesting. Again, if For the Queen does really, really well, maybe Darrington will put it out there and kick me to finish it. But it is in progress. It is happening. I would not be surprised if it exists as a viable product in the next year or two. It’s coming down the pipe, but it’s taking its time.

Image: Lara Georgia Carson/Darrington Press

You’re known most for For the Queen and Star Crossed, but you have so many smaller games out there, many of them independently published. What are you proudest of? Or what would you point a For the Queen fan to if they want something very different that still has your sensibility?

Okay, so I have two answers. The game people probably want to play is Our Time on Earth, a two-player game that you play asynchronously, in six days or six weeks or six months. You message each other, or write letters, whatever, that kind of epistolary format. And you pretend that the two of you are aliens visiting Earth for a limited time, for six days or six weeks or six months. And you send each other messages about what you’re experiencing in the world.

It’s a very sweet game that takes place in these very small moments. If you want to hear an actual play, I was on Party of One with Jeff Stormer, and we played it over audio messages to each other. It’s very soft. It’s an understated game, and it takes place in these tiny little experiences with one person. It’s very easy to play, because all you need is a friend who lives far away, and I think we all have a friend who lives far away, who we don’t see as often as we would like.

So that’s my palatable answer that is probably accurate to what people want. But here’s the thing: The best game I’ve ever made is Pop! It’s a live-action game about a community of balloon fetishists. It’s in the Honey and Hot Wax anthology of live-action games, although I don’t think this game is erotic. I think it’s just about sex, kind of. It came out in March 2020, when nobody was playing games that involved intimate contact.

Pop! is the best game I’ve ever made. I’m so proud of it. Everyone who’s played it has had a beautiful experience. It’s played in person — you put up a bunch of paper on the walls and you write on it with markers, because you’re playing an online community. So you’re in the room with other people, but you’re not actually interacting face-to-face with them until the last act of the game, which is a little half-hour in-person meetup, where you meet all your friends and enemies from online in person. And people always act differently online than they do in person, and that carries over to role-play as well.

Some people love to pop balloons, and that’s fun and hot. Some people have a phobic response to popping. And all those people are trying to get along in a community together. I thought about that game for years. I never thought I would actually make it, because I thought Nobody wants to play my game about balloon kinksters. But I went to an artist residency in Corvallis, Oregon, and I was like, Okay, this is my one chance, so we did it and ran it, and it was so fun and so great. I wish more people would play it.

If you can get 10 to 12 people into a room with a lot of paper and pens, and everyone’s willing to play about the things we didn’t think we would ever have in common with other people — it’s a game about desire and finding belonging, and then having that belonging challenged, and how we get along with people. How our insecurities and peculiarities can get in the way of that. And feeling like a freak, and then feeling like a member of a group. That’s my real answer. I wish everyone would play Pop!

Image: Pelgrane Press

Looping back to For the Queen — it’s such a flexible game. I’ve seen it played almost comedically, or for high drama. It can be a game about loyalty, or longing, or about vengeance against someone who dares to make you feel desire you can’t act on. Do you have a favorite playthrough experience?

I’ve had a few. I played it with a friend of mine on a road trip. They were driving, and I was in the passenger seat. Something about that format gave us so much opportunity to answer questions, and then really sit and reflect on them, and stare out the window and talk about relationships.

But honestly, something that is really memorable, that really stays with me, was playtesting the game with my dad and sister. My dad had never played a role-playing game before. In that game — I won’t go into too much detail, but I learned a lot about how my father feels about his military service. For whatever reason, there was a way to learn that through this game, and through his fictional character, who was a soldier in service of the queen. For whatever reason, I hadn’t learned about that before, and I don’t know if there would have been another way to understand that side of him. So that one definitely sticks out for me.