It's the 1920s: flappers sip giggle water in seedy speakeasies, jazz music hovers in the air like thick cigar smoke, and Shakespeare's daughter has fled to Paris to find her roots. Shakespeare gathers a trusted few to create a masterpiece exploring his relationship with his estranged daughter, and, of course, things get terribly out of hand.

THE CAST

Shakespeare (played by Jerome)
The famous (or infamous, depending upon who you ask) playwright. Disapproves of his daughter's flight of fancy. Works through his personal problems by asking people to act them out for him.

Viola
Shakespeare's daughter, musical savant, seized by wanderlust. She runs away to France to "find her roots" with the help of a couple friends—her father isn't happy about this.

James (played by Shimon)
Viola's childhood friend. May not-so-secretly be in love with her. Claims to have received a postcard from Viola recently, postmarked Barcelona.

Eliza (played by Ed)
Viola's childhood piano instructor. Love the classics, loves rules and structure, possibly also loves Shakespeare. Prone to cattiness.

Hank (played by Derek)
Inexplicably continues to get roles in Shakespeare's plays despite numerous absences. Reportedly has experience in "banking," whatever that entails. He can get you cash in a hurry—for a small fee, of course.

Penelope (played by Merri)
Viola's best friend, according to herself. Not the brightest bulb in the Broadway sign. Wonders what a shirt is—like, what is it? Tries to cover up her intense jealousy of Viola and fails.

Hermia (played by Missy)
Viola's other music teacher. Likes jazz, improvisation, and living vicariously through her free-spirited protégé. Also prone to cattiness.


I hadn't played a game like My Daughter, the Queen of France before. I'm new to story games, and totally new to games without an element of randomness—MDtQoF doesn't use dice rolls or Jenga towers to determine what happens, instead relying entirely on character interaction to shape the story. What I loved about this was that it really made the story feel like ours. It was a collaborative effort from start to finish, based upon a relatively simple premise and a few questions to answer.

At first, the bare-bones structure was a little intimidating. It was my first time at the Story Games meet-up, and I’m a shy, if social, person. Immediately after filling out my index card with a few tidbits about my character (Hermia, free-spirited music instructor too old to be a flapper), I wondered if I'd set my character up in a way that wouldn't mesh with the others, if I was going to be able to muster the confidence to speak not only as my own character, but as my character impersonating other characters, and a million other anxieties that were gone by the middle of the first scene.

This is clearly a community game. You can jump in and flesh out your own character, but the real fun comes from seeing how others interpret and parody your character. I gradually felt Hermia grow more and more flawed as others played her in scenes, and that made her far more interesting. As we replayed scenes with required lines (my favorites included, "You're a hack!" and "Why am I even here?"), each interaction gained more depth, more relevance, and more hilarity.

I think we struggled a bit with always implementing the MDtQoF rules—emotion seemed to be present from the beginning, and we didn't always get to each required line in a scene. That didn't really bother me all that much (I had fun regardless), but it would have been fun to see the different ways that lines could be interpreted depending upon inflection, the speaker, and the increasing context. It's a rule I felt totally okay with flubbing in the interest of getting invested (which, for me, comes from pushing on my character and finding their flaws, which, in my opinion, are always more interesting than their virtues).

My Daughter, the Queen of France was a fabulous (semi-) introduction to story gaming because it demonstrates the importance of character to story and the ways that collaboration can enrich the experience. While I enjoy the story games I've played that rely primarily on each person playing their own individual character, I appreciated the way that this game encouraged character and story development as a team effort. It was a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it to anybody interested in collaborative storytelling, whether they're familiar with story games or not.

---

I hope I didn't get anybody's names wrong, just correct me if I did. I have the wonderful gift of being terrible with both names and faces. I didn't go into too much summary of the events of the game, but if somebody wants a scene-by-scene refresher (save the scene torn up by Shakespeare in a fit of passion) I can write that up as well! Thanks for a great time, Merri and I both loved the experience and will probably be back for future meetings!

---

Now here's the podcast plug:

Merri and I are working on a podcast called Fake Geek Girls. Our first episode is up on our website (iTunes is in the words). We chatted briefly about this at the table, but here's our little copy/pasted spiel.

"A podcast by geek girls, for geek girls (and anyone else) discussing media, fandoms, and anything else that strikes our fancy."

We have a variety of social media accounts if you want to keep up on us! Here you go:

Our Website /Facebook/Tumblr/Twitter/Instagram

I hadn't played a game like My Daughter, the Queen of France before.

Very few games are quite like My Daughter the Queen of France. Very few :)

Nice summary, Missy! That sense of collaboration and shared creative ownership is really the heart and soul of all the games we play.