Princess Legend

29th June 2019

It's a Saturday lunchtime at 'The Sovereigns'.

We should be playing 50 Fathoms, but sometimes life interferes.
So instead we are playing Princess Legend.

Will the Prince find his Princess (Yay!), or will he get the Queen instead (Boo!)! Only you can find out in... Princess Legend.
Princess Legend is a 'bluffing/social deduction/hidden' role card game. Everyone is given a role to play and the 'Prince player' tried to guess who is the Princess.

What's in a game?
Princess Legend is pretty light on components.

A deck of 8 cards. They are actually coasters and not traditional playing cards in size. Each card has a colourful portrait on it. There 3 types of character on the 8 coaster.

• The Honest: There are 3 'honest' characters. The Prince, the Princess and the Fairy.
• The Dishonest: There are 3 'dishonest' characters. The Queen, the Guard and the Siamese.
• The Neutral: There are 2 'neutral' characters. The Maid and the Spy (A spy neutral, hmm, OK.).

​A bunch of tokens to track scoring.
And that's it!

How's it play?

Set up.
The amount of coasters that are used in a game is equal to the number of players plus 1. Thus if you play with 4 players, the game would be played with 5 coasters.
​Princess Legend is played with a minimum of 3 players and 4 coasters. The Prince, the Princess, the Queen and the Maid are always used in all games. The other characters will be used dependant upon the number of players participating.

Every player will play the role of the Prince. The Prince's role moves clockwise round the table in every round.

Firstly, the Prince coaster is given to the player in the Prince role in this turn. The coaster is kept face-up as everyone knows who is the Prince.

Secondly, the remaining coasters are shuffled and dealt face-down to the remaining players. One coaster is placed into the middle of the playing area is played by nobody.
Once dealing has finished the Prince must close their eyes, then all the other players must reveal their roles (Now only the Prince does not know what everybody else's roles are.). Then all the players (With their eyes open.) are satisfied that they've seen everyone else's role, they turn their coasters back face-down again, the Prince can open their eyes once more.
Now play can commence.

Let's do this thing!
The Prince's objective is to guess which player is the Princess (Or if it's the coaster in the middle). To do this, the Prince must ask the other players questions.
However, the objectives of the other players will be different. Other players will want to get the Prince to pick a certain face-down coaster. Each player's objective is different according to their role.

• Princess/Fairy players also want the Prince to find the Princess.
• Queen/Guard/Siamese players will want the Prince to wrongly choose the Queen.
• Maid/Guard players will want the Prince to wrongly select any role except the Princess or Queen.

However, there is a limit to the questions that can be asked. The Prince can ask each player only one question each (In any order.). When all players have answered a question, then the Prince has one final question that they can ask anyone.

Not only is the Prince limited to the number of questions that they can ask. They are also limited in what the question can be. There are only 3 questions that can be asked. They are:

• Where is the Princess?
• Who are you?
• Who is that (Pointing to another player or the coaster in the middle.)?

How the players answer this question is dependant on what role they have.

• Honest characters (Princess/Fairy) must answer honestly.
• Dishonest characters (Queen/Guard/Siamese) must always be dishonest and lie.
• Neutral characters (Maid/Spy) may choose whether to tell the truth or lie.

Once the Prince has made their guess on who is the Princess, all the other players reveal their roles. Then we see who has scored a point in this round.

• If the Prince successfully guessed who was the Princess; all the honest characters earn a point for their players.
• If the Prince wrongly selected the Queen; then all the dishonest characters earn a point.
• If the Prince wrongly selected any character other then the Princess or the Queen; then the neutral characters earn a point.

Endgame.
Play progress until each player has played the Prince 1, 2 or 3 times (Depending on number of players).
Then points are tallied. Highest score wins.

Overall?
Generally, I dislike bluffing/hidden role games. But this is one of the better ones I've played. I like how your put into random, shifting teams each round and then trying to work with your temporary colleagues.

Princess Legend also seems to differ to many other hidden role games: In most hidden role games, your role is hidden from all other players. But in Princess Legend, your role is only hidden from the Prince.
I think that this makes the game a little less intense, a player only has to deal with questions from one other player and even then, there's a maximum of 2 questions to answer.
And those answered are never really challenged, because the Prince play must use logic and reasoning to try and figure their choice. When a player lies to the Prince, figuring out it's a lie will provide information in itself.

So I think Princess Legend is a 'tolerable' hidden role game - which for me means it's quite good - for that sort of game.