General pitch: lazy-medieval. The daughter, Beatrice, actually is Queen of France. Shakespeare thinks of her as sensible, but she has invaded Germany.

ACTORS

Shakespeare (Sam)

Vladamire (Drew): Beatrice's bodyguard.

Viola (Natalie): Beatrice's mother.

Airrol (Ed): a stage-hand, father of Beatrice's ex-lover.

Simon (Seth): Beatrice's childhood friend.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Cordelia, an actress
Marlowe, Shakespeare's mentor; playwright, spy, master carouser

SCENES: (in order of appearance)

A FEW MONTHS AGO, Paris, backstage after a performance
Shakespeare, Beatrice, Cordelia, Vlad
Beatrice, now Queen, breaks the news that she's invading Germany.
Certainties: the line 'Don't lie to me, big man.'

TEN YEARS AGO, at the house in Stratford, Christmas break:
Shakespeare, Beatrice, Viola
Beatrice is back from university; Viola and Shakespeare are breaking it to her that they're separating.
Certainties: Beatrice guesses about the separation before she's told, Viola is angry at Shakespeare's failure to wrap presents, Beatrice is studying strategy, Viola delivers the line 'It'll be fine. We have a lot of alcohol.'

FOUR YEARS AGO, at the Globe
Shakespeare, Beatrice, Cordelia, Airrol
The company are rehearsing: Beatrice comes to deliver the news that she is to be Queen.
Certainties: Beatrice is the doppelganger of the Princess of France, the line 'It's almost never about Moliere', Shakespeare asks Beatrice to step in and deliver Airrol's lines

WHEN BEATRICE WAS SIX, in a tavern in Southwark
Shakespeare, Beatrice, Marlowe, Viola
Shakespeare is a young man, flush with newfound success; Viola is a single mother having to waitress with a kid in tow. Shakespeare is pursuing her. (Marlowe keeps being Marlowe and stealing the scene.)
Certainties: Beatrice delivers the lines "I want to hear a story" and "Are you my dad?". Marlowe delivers the lines "Beer is the best thing in the world" and (to Viola) "You're a good little helper." Marlowe accuses Shakespeare of authorial bias.

WHEN BEATRICE WAS FOURTEEN, at home in Stratford
Shakespeare, Beatrice
Shakespeare instructs his daughter on the important lessons of history.
Certainties: the general sense that the lessons of history are to be applied to the present. The line "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

WHEN BEATRICE WAS ELEVEN, countryside outside Stratford.
Shakespeare, Beatrice, Marlowe, Simon
Marlowe is visiting the country for his health; Beatrice and Simon arrive, having just been beaten up by some older kids.
Certainties: Marlowe delivers the line "The point I'm trying to make - no, I lost it."

It's fun being Shakespeare. Setting scenes with a big fat agenda, and trying to herd the actors towards something resembling what you want, is tricky and entertaining. After a while I realised that everybody was having lots of fun with the tavern scene, so I started using it as a carrot - while on the other hand I kept going back to that two-person age-14 scene, however much the actors hated it, until they got the bloody idea.

The actors were really keen on certain ideas - that Shakespeare was totally theatre-obsessed and thought nothing was more important, and that Beatrice was a scheming, vicious Machiavellian figure. Shakespeare really hated both those ideas. He also hated it when secondary characters eclipsed him in scenes - Vladamire and Cordelia flirting, Marlowe being Marlowe. He also does not like it when actors turn his heart-touching moments into slapstick.

It is super-entertaining making Shakespeare be a sucker for Shakespearean contrivances - the plot device revolving around Beatrice being a dead ringer for the princess, the bit where Beatrice wants to be told a story.

A really fun and unusual game! It was hard to wrap my head around it at first, but once I got the hang of it I was head over heels.

It's funny that you were using the tavern scene as a carrot, because it was driving me nuts -- I kept thinking, "What does he want out of this scene?!" I can see where "everyone quits" might be a realistic result in a game where the actors have to go through the same scene a dozen times.

Since everyone seemed interested in learning what was driving their fellow players: Viola still harbored some resentment for Shakespeare and their failed marriage and felt Beatrice could do no wrong, and got a few digs in at him. However, as they played back over their past, she remembered what Shakespeare had meant to both her and Beatrice and tried to focus on the best qualities of both to help her friend reach some resolution.

Viola also viewed herself as a proud, tough woman who raised a successful daughter (alone for six years, no less!) and did not particularly enjoy interpretations where she was crying or humorless.

She was also a ghost! (Okay, she wasn't a ghost.)

This was a really fascinating game

things I liked:

* breaking story permanence. The concept that if someone says something happens then it happens and the other players shouldn't go "actually it turns out this other thing really happened and you were just confused" is a very important one for story games as it both ensures everyone feels that their contributions matter and also stories about crazy people aren't always interesting. But sometimes you're playing a game and have this awesome idea for what could happen and then someone else says something that derails that idea. So its cool to see a game that actually lets you later go "I really wanted everyone to actually hate the play" in a way that is still fun and consistent and doesn't crush other people's contributions.

* getting to play other characters as your character
this was loads of fun. Sometimes in games it can be weird if different players play the same NPC because they'll play them slightly differently, but here seeing the differences in how various characters portray everyone is part of what makes the game fascinating.
Also its really cool incorporating all the bits about your character into their acting.

things I was more neutral towards

* having to work X into the scenes. On the one hand, this set up a number of great jokes. But often it felt a little contrived having to work an exact line into the scene. So I both liked this but also didn't like it.

* while the extra level of abstraction made it really interesting for exploring my character, it was still a little tricky to figure out what made the other characters tick. That could just be being new to the game, its tricky enough putting your character in all these different hats that you lose focus on also trying to figure out why Shakespeare is acting the way he is.

* I think part of the issue with the two person scene is that it was a two person scene. That means half of us weren't involved. Plus it was all dialog. So there were less people in the scene to make interesting stuff happen, and also less room to make interesting stuff happen. Where as the larger scenes I felt like we had more room to work in.

but overall this was a fun, unique game that I certainly look forward to playing again at some point.

<i>* I think part of the issue with the two person scene is that it was a two person scene. That means half of us weren't involved. Plus it was all dialog. So there were less people in the scene to make interesting stuff happen, and also less room to make interesting stuff happen. Where as the larger scenes I felt like we had more room to work in.</i>

Yeah. Part of the reason why I made a two-person scene, and kept bloody well coming back to it even though it was clear that the actors weren't very keen on it, was that Shakespeare really, really wanted the play to be about him and his daughter, and other scenes kept being about other characters.