Kyle Shire is a games designer as well as one of the producers for the hit streaming show Critical Role. His latest game is Queen By Midnight. We caught up with him to find out more.

STARBURST: How would you pitch Queen By Midnight to a beloved family member who’s only ever played Monopoly and Settlers of Catan?

Kyle Shire: Queen By Midnight is a deck-building game where you play as powerful princesses who are battling to become the next Midnight Queen. Round by round, you play and purchase cards that add to your princesses’ unique arsenal of powers, tricks, attacks, and spells, an arsenal that you unleash upon your opponents. When the clocktower strikes Midnight, the game is over, and whoever has the most health and clout (and is still alive) is the winner!

Queen By Midnight is a straightforward introduction to the deck-building game genre with characters that vary in complexity. Play as Hephesta on your first game and give it three rounds. If it’s still not making sense to you after that, we can totally bust out Catan and fight over Longest Road.

All the princesses in Queen By Midnight have very specific looks and designs; what came first, the characters or the mechanics?

Definitely, the characters came first. As a writer and a theatre kid to the core, it was important to me to first figure out what princess archetypes I wanted to pull from, what twists and spins I could add to them, and then discern who they are as people. What do they care about? What are their outlooks? Their goals? And then, once I had all that mapped out, I used their stories to inform their mechanics and playstyles. Ludonarrative harmony is a thing of beauty to me. Rosaline, for example, is more than just a psychedelic twist on Briar Rose from Sleeping Beauty. She’s a powerful seer who dreamt of a great calamity that can only be averted if she becomes the next Queen. These powers and motivations are illustrated in her mechanics with things like her Trance cards and Prophecy Tokens, which she can use to avoid incoming attacks. Also, Rosaline has the highest Major Caster score of any princess, but her playstyle is slow, methodical, and defensive because she isn’t fighting for glory, ego, or power.

How did the clocktower board come out?

Back in the day, when I was imagining this game would only get made via crowdfunding, the ‘clocktower’ was just going to be a 2D mat. But once Alex Ubaldi from Darrington Press was brought on board, he had the inspired idea to add some table presence to the game by making the clocktower not just 3D but rotating as well, so every player sitting around the table can get a good view of the current round, what cards are available in the bazaar, etc. Then the intrepid team at Matt Paquette & Co figured out a way to somehow make the clocktower buildable, sturdy, and gosh darn gorgeous. I’m absolutely astounded at how it turned out.

You’re also a producer for Critical Role; what TTRPGS are you currently playing, and what are your all-time favourites?

Of course, I’m a huge D&D nerd and have been for almost 20 years. The Eberron campaign setting will always have a special place in my heart. I’m currently running a sandbox-style fantasy western set in Eberron as my home game. I also love the World of Darkness games, and I’m currently in a Changeling The Dreaming game that my partner Jon Sims is running, where we’re teenage fairies in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1996. The world of Shadowrun is hands down one of my all-time favourite game settings (it’s our world, in the future, but there’s magic, and a dragon was president, late-stage capitalism is the BBEG, it’s a great setting)). And now that the book is out, I’m super excited to spool up a Candela Obscura game of my own! 

Did any of these inspire Queen by Midnight?

There are some narrative seeds within the Eberron Campaign Setting and Changeling The Dreaming that inspired a bit of lore within Queen By Midnight, specifically in dealing with how the fey realm works and the role stories play in its existence.

Do you have any expansions planned?

The continent Queen By Midnight takes place on is called Twelvefold, and you only meet six princesses in the core game, and that’s all I have to say about that 🙂 

What’s your next big project?

I have about three projects in the hopper right now. I’m working on a TTRPG that unites my love of role-playing with my years of experience working in reality TV because, fun fact: there are a striking amount of similarities between what GMs do when plotting a TTRPG story and what reality TV story producers do when plotting a season of Real Housewives, or The Bachelor for example. 

I’m also writing a 5e campaign module set in Eberron that’s more of a labour of love than anything.

And finally, I’m working on a spec TV pilot that I’m sure no one will ever see, but I don’t care! I’m doing it! 🙂

You can read our review of Queen By Midnight here, and pick up a copy at your friendly local games store.