Our cast: Miranda Shakespeare; her father, William Shakespeare (Caroline); her sister, Portia Shakespeare (Martin); their neighbor, Cordelia (Katie Jo); her college boyfriend, Randall (Jay).
The estrangement: Miranda Shakespeare gave up her five-year-old son for adoption. Her father couldn't handle it. They argued over the phone, and since then, silence.
The real truth: Shakespeare was a nervous, eager parent, the kind who always needs to be told what a wonderful dad he is and how happy his children are. Miranda grew up learning to lie to him rather than disappoint him. When she got pregnant, she didn't want to keep the baby but he wanted her to, and as always she couldn't say no. Five years later, her secret resentment was overwhelming, and making a clean break with the past was the only way forward.

This was a fantastic game of My Daughter. The story that emerged about why the estrangement happened was very organic and felt very true. Everybody at the table was on the same page, except Shakespeare, and he just couldn't accept it. He kept making us do the estrangement scene over and over again, I think about fifteen times in total, often cutting it off after a line or two because it was going in the wrong direction. Nobody wanted to walk away, though, because we felt bad for him. I (Portia) eventually started a campaign of breaking the rules- I addressed my dialogue directly to Shakespeare even when not in a monologue, saying the things I thought Shakespeare should have said rather than what he did say, picking up the scenes where we left off rather than starting at the beginning, etc. Eventually, Cordelia got tired, and we all quit simultaneously, leaving Shakespeare at the table still frantically writing.

Rage quit for great justice!

How much table talk did y'all allow? I've seen pros and cons both ways.

Nice. Do you think fewer players helped? My first Queen of France game was the same size (Shakespeare +3) and I've always been a fan of keeping the numbers low. Everyone is being two people at once and doing layers-within-layers of secret story. Too many people and it's just too much work to keep track of the threads, plus you lose that intimacy.

4 players seemed like a good fit to me, having never played before. Do people play with big groups?

Morgan: We discouraged table talk without banning it. Generally people would say a line or two in-character in a way that wouldn't change the flow of the story. Sitting in stony silence is weird, but you don't want the table talk to give any insight into the characters beyond what comes up in play.

Ben: I didn't feel any different in this four player game compared to fives I've played. It's fewer variables to keep track of, but on the other hand it allows more different takes on the same character. One thing I will say is that four-character scenes are usually awkward.

Jay: Five counting Shakespeare is the biggest I've been in, I think.

Wait Jay you've never played this before?! What is happening!

I prefer a four player game myself. It allows Shakespeare to frame tight and intimate scenes. I liked that no one went for the frequent 'Shakespeare is a monster' trope that tends to emerge. I felt like everyone played sympathetically and understandingly.

I feel like we struck a good balance between some and no table-talk. Something I always do now as Shakespeare is leave between character creation and beginning of play in order to let the players talk a little more about their characters. The intent is to prevent the players from misrepresenting a character unknowingly, as has happened to the disappointment of that player. Does anyone else do this? Does it seem like a good idea?

You're not a monster, dad. You just made a lot of mistakes. All parents do that. (I have also seen people portray Shakespeare as the angel and the daughter as the monster, and we avoided that too. Go us!)

I like allowing for the possibility of things that the actors know that Shakespeare doesn't. We didn't have any misinterpretation-prevention things to say, but that was when we established there that Randall was the father of Miranda's son. It fits the theme of the game for Shakespeare to be the only one ignorant of certain facts of the story.

Caroline, I like your idea about letting folks talk it out a bit. Is there a chance that Shakespeare will misrepresent them though?

One of the things I find most interesting about My Daughter is that all characterizations are indirect. This is most obviously true for Shakespeare, but certainly the case for all characters. The infrequency with which players have a chance to play 'their character' means that every character is a pastiche of first/second/third person perspectives, which naturally results in inconsistency. Reconciling that during gameplay is, for my money, one of the coolest parts of the game.

Added to this mess is the fact that misrepresenting people is a key technique in My Daughter. Whether calculated or unintentional, one of the most potent dynamics in this game is critique through caricature.

I agree that it's very interesting mechanically, and it presents an interesting challenge. However, the irony of misrepresentation is entirely lost when the players don't know the truth. In my opinion, the fun of playing other people is enhanced by actually knowing a little bit about who they are. If one player controls the truth about the character, but doesn't get a chance to express that truth through the very strict role-playing mechanics of the game, then the other players who take that character often grossly misrepresent the truth that we allowed one player to create, but not share.

On the same note, while it might be interesting mechanically, it can be unfortunate socially. If we rely on players' role-playing alone to understand their character, we are in effect giving people with more acting ability more power in the fiction. That's a big assertion--but I think a key reason to why I step aside for a few minutes as Shakespeare to give the players an opportunity to describe their characters.

Note--if this were played as I believe Daniel originally envisioned, with primary characters playing characters who aren't seated at the table during Shakespeare's scenes, then this problem is moot. In this case, our representation of the characters doesn't matter as much because we won't be contradicting any player's creative domain.