Critical Role Producer Kyle Shire On His New Game Queen By Midnight

Summary

Queen By Midnight, the latest game from Darrington Press, has sold out in less than an hour every day at GenCon, creating a buzz in the TTRPG space.
Kyle Shire, the game’s creator and designer, drew inspiration from strong female characters and wanted to create a game with cool, three-dimensional depictions of princesses.
The development process with Darrington Press involved finding artists, balancing the game mechanics, and collaborating to enhance the overall gameplay experience.

Queen By Midnight is the latest game to come from Darrington Press, Critical Role‘s game publishing company, and it has taken the TTRPG space by storm. Selling out in less than an hour every day at GenCon, this battle royale deck-building card game allows players to step into the roles of badass princesses to compete to become Queen of the Midnight Court by the time the clock strikes midnight. Each princess has their own in-depth backstory, inspired by fairytales and folklore, and special skills that players can utilize to come out on top.

Queen By Midnight is Kyle Shire’s first game. The Critical Role producer created and designed the game, with additional design provided by Alex Uboldi once Darrington Press became involved. The graphic design of Queen By Midnight was done by Matt Paquette & Co. with stunning art from Ameera Sheikh, Michal Ivan, and Mike Pape. Queen By Midnight can be played by 3-6 players and is for ages 12 and older.

Kyle Shire spoke with FilmmakerFocus about Queen By Midnight, revealing the inspiration for the game and explaining the character creation for each of the princesses. Shire broke down the development process and how he worked with Darrington Press to make his game a reality. He also shared how his experience at Critical Role helped him and why he loves working on Sam Riegel’s hilarious ads at the beginning of every Critical Role episode.

Kyle Shire Talks Queen By Midnight

FilmmakerFocus: Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m very excited to talk to you about Queen By Midnight because it looks like so much fun. It sold out at GenCon every day in 15 minutes! How did that feel?

Kyle Shire: Absolutely surreal. Not that I have all of the times memorized, but I do believe the first day it was 49 minutes and then each day afterwards, it was like within 20 minutes. And then I think on the last day, it was about 14 minutes. I saw videos of people running to get in line for it, which again, it feels extremely surreal to me because given that this is my first game I just keep telling myself, “This doesn’t happen. This doesn’t happen.” So I’m doing my best to drink it in and enjoy it as best I can, but it’s just strange, in a very, very good way.

Can you tell me a little bit about the inspiration for Queen By Midnight? Because the characters are so cool, and the gameplay is very intuitive.

Kyle Shire: Thank you. Yeah, I always ascribe to the idea that when you’re making something, whether you are designing a game or writing a screenplay, or making a d&d game, or designing a pair of clothes, you should always be wanting to make something that you would want to purchase and participate with. If I saw this game on the shelves I would buy it so fast. So I grew up with a single mom and two older sisters and so I literally grew up looking up to women, and female characters. Literally my favorite Power Ranger growing up was the Pink Ranger and I would go on these long rants about why Kimberly was that Power Ranger. And then that evolved into of course X-Men with Storm and Emma Frost and Jubilee and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I’ve always been the biggest fan of strong, wonderful, powerful women because that was who I grew up with. And so I wanted to make a game that kind of exemplified the type of story that I wanted to see. In the gaming space, there aren’t a lot of really cool three dimensional nuanced depictions of female characters, which aggravates me, I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be a woman in that space. So I just wanted to make something that I would want to buy and also something that like if my niece’s saw it, they’d be like, “Oh, wow, you can be a princess and you can also be a fighter. You can be a badass.”

That was really important to me, especially when you’re taking these Princess fairy tales and folk tales that we all know, but figuring out a way to kind of reimagine them in a different way because at the end of the day, fairy tales are for everybody. And you should be able to reimagine them however you want. And so, what would a lot of these fairytales look like in a fantasy matriarchal society versus a horrible patriarchal society that we live in? So that was a roundabout way of saying that.

Can you talk to me a little bit about the development process with Darrington Press?

Kyle Shire: Absolutely. I made this game in 2019, that was when all of the really hard grunt work went into it. And it was after I got laid off from a company that rhymes with Shmachinima. After that, I was kind of aimless and this game was a really great way for me to focus my time and attention into something and really feel like I was building towards something when I felt rudderless. When I got this job at CR I was like, “Okay, I’m producing now. So I’m just gonna put this game that I’ve been working for 10-11 months on the back burner and just focus on this job.” Basically, when Darrington Press became a thing and I finally got Ivan to come around and take a look at it on Tabletop Simulator. A lot of it was basically done.

That was something that Ivan remarked to me and made me feel pretty good because he basically said, “You’ve already done the hard part and now they got to basically do the fun part.” Which was finding artists for it and translating the mechanics into a graphic design pattern with Matt Paquette & Co. and balancing it and all that stuff. I’m not a numbers guy. I’m much more of an intuitive sort of hippit dippity game designer. So having Alex Uboldi come on to really be able to break it down in terms of, “Hey, I’ve taken the win conditions for every princess and put them into a mathematical formula and such, and such a character has a 5.5% chance of winning while this character has this chance. So we need to balance this out.”

Basically, everything that they brought to the table as far as a shift, or a mechanical shift and whatnot. I was super onboard for. Everything that they did was just a great way of cutting away the fluff and emphasizing what makes the game good. I was just super happy to have seen those notes come in and just be like, “Yes!” There was never a moment where they came to me with a note. And I was like, “That is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. Don’t you dare do that.” Yeah, it was a great process.

I love that it’s taking these folklore and fairy tales and just adjusting them to this new setting. Can you talk about the character creation process that you went through? Because all of them are so interesting.

Kyle Shire: To me, that was one of the most fun processes was taking these Princess archetypes that we are all familiar with and first of all, diving into the source material of them. The original fairy tales that that they came from, and kind of realizing like, “Okay, what made these interesting, and why do these persist? And how can they be shifted in a way that feels fresh, but also retains kind of the same ideas behind them?” A lot of them kind of ended up being bigger swings in different directions than others.

But I think someone Hephesta exemplifies the conceit of the game really well as a cipher for a Cinderella archetype. Where instead of a glass slipper, she has a suit of armor made out of glass and a giant glass hammer. Instead of going to a ball, she went to a fight, she went to a battle. And instead of banishing her wicked stepmother and stepsisters she beat them in an honorable duel. I think that sort of twist on it exemplifies what I was trying to do with all these princesses. So yeah, to me, that was, that was the most fun. That’s the most cool… I don’t know…problem. I don’t want to say problem, but the coolest kind of riddle to crack and solve.

Can you talk to me a little bit about the playtesting process and how that impacted the game design?

Kyle Shire: Absolutely. So when I was making this game in 2019, basically, I would ask my very good friends who I would play d&d with to come over and play test this game that I’ve been working on. And I think it probably went through three, somewhat different iterations of the game that you see now before you. Basically how it would go is I would bring my friends over who I was really, really close with, and valued their opinion. If they got real with me, I wouldn’t be offended and basically, afterward, when we were done with the game, I had little surveys. Which character did you play? Did you win? What were some mechanics that you liked, which was some that you didn’t like? And I still have those surveys, in my little binder at home for this. My little commemorative binder.

Basically, I was just trying to go off of what felt the most fun and what gave them the best power fantasy, in a way? Whether or not you win is inconsequential, to did you have fun playing this character? Did you have a good experience? And so that was always something that I tried to move my weathervane towards, or move my ship mast towards. I don’t know, navigation metaphor. That’s what I was trying to go towards.

Once I felt really confident in the mechanics, and basically once I did I think it was like 10 play tests, and the mechanics basically didn’t shift. That was when I knew that, “Okay, I feel a little bit more comfortable. Now, maybe I can broaden the scope of who I’m asking you to play test.” So that’s when I started bringing in acquaintances that I knew through the LA Gayming Society or LAGS. It’s a social group for LGBTQ people who like to play games, they do events at Akbar and stuff. I brought in some of my friends and acquaintances from there.

And then once I felt comfortable with acquaintances, I reached out to strangers who I met doing Friday Night Magic. And let me tell you, if you’re approaching total strangers that you meet at Friday Night Magic to play a game, you must feel very confident in how your game plays, because they do not mince words, and they will break your game as soon as humanly possible. So that was a bit of the play testing experience.

And then what has been the most surprising part of this whole process?

Kyle Shire: Honestly, the reception has been incredibly surprising. I knew that my game was good. And I knew that Darreington Press was going to do a great job with it. I wasn’t expecting it to sell out like that at GenCon. I wasn’t expecting so many of the Darrington Press Guild Stores to have been putting on these wonderful events promoting the game. And basically, just the amount of excitement that people have been drumming up for it, I really wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting it to do well. I was expecting at worst, maybe a C or C+ plus performance. Maybe at best a B+. I wasn’t expecting A performances and so far, it’s been doing pretty good. So I’m really shocked in a good way.

Well earned. Was there anything that you learned from working on Critical Role that helped you in those final stages of the game development?

Kyle Shire: Yeah, I think that a cornerstone of being a good producer is knowing how to set people up for success, and then getting the eff out of the way. And at CR that’s the name of the game in a lot of ways. As is producing in general. Especially when you’re working with eight incredibly talented people that have been in the space for a really long time and know what they’re doing, you don’t need to hold their hand. At the same token, knowing how and when to collaborate with people.

And sort of embracing the joy that you get from divorcing your own ego from a project that feels very close to you. Realizing that when you put that kind of trust in another person, when you’re collaborating with them, you’re only going to make what you care about even better. I think that having a toxic level of ownership over something can work to the detriment of a product. And I didn’t want that for this.

I’m not a monolith. I will never pretend to be one. And I’m so grateful that I got to work with some of the best folks to make this possible. So yeah, I think knowing how and when to collaborate, and knowing when a good idea that is contrary to what you brought to the table is good. That was one thing and then obviously just knowing how to set people up, and then just be like, “All right, now it’s in your hands. I’m gonna go sit in video village and eat some Funyuns.”

What has it been like to be a part of Critical Role as it’s grown to have other shows like Candela Obscura, and then Darrington Press with these other games and everything?

Kyle Shire: Oh, it’s, it’s tremendous. Just seeing this company grow into all these different facets and putting out all of these brand new IPs. It’s really tremendous to see and I love being on the ground floor. Oh, man, being able to keep secrets in this company is it’s, you’re just like, “Oh, man, I just want people to see this cool thing that’s waiting in the wings forever!” And then people finally get to see it and it’s just. Yeah, that’s a great feeling when you’ve been anticipating the release of something that’s been close to the chest for so long.

Sam’s ads are insane. What is that experience like? Because I don’t know how you guys are able to do that.

Kyle Shire: Sam’s ads are legitimately one of the best parts of my job. So, I did comedy for a really long time when I moved out here and for one reason or another, I don’t do stand up anymore. But being able to do that kind of really fun, hard fast sketch vibe that I used to do when I was at UCB or Second City. Being able to revisit that is just a treat and Sam is, I really do feel like we speak the same kind of absurdist 90s Conan, comedy language. So it’s just a treat to get to collaborate with him on that stuff.