Its been a while since I’ve even looked at the draft for Monkey, the revision just before this year’s Furnace and even longer since I’ve done any work on it. Heck most of the draft was written over a year ago. Sure I’ve done a ton of playtesting since then, but its now time to take a serious look at the draft with the aim of moving it significantly on. Having the general goal of writing the narrator’s advice chapter and setting chapters hasn’t motivated me much to get it finished. Ok so I’ve had HiG & SQ on the go, but both those things are now nicely ticking over so there’s no excuse not to get on with Monkey.
So I’m taking the draft, plus some feedback I got on the current version and a couple of my refference books on Holiday with me next week. The aim is not to write reams of new text, but more to have a general mull over the text and;
1. Work out whether this is the game I want to run now. I think the Con games I ran over the last year proved to me that its the game I envisoned over a year ago – which was satisfying then. Is it satisfying now?
2. Can it be streamlined and made clearer ? I want the text to be as clear and unambigous as possible. To many game I pick up waffle on and I know I do in certain places in Monkey.
3. What my goals are with it. Is this going to be a book I support adnasuem or a single self contained realease. Do I want to get it into shops or I’m I just happy selling it through Lulu.
4. A To Do list which breaks down exactly what I need to do get it published.
If any of the Mighty Monkey army have any suggestions of things I should think about and look at make comment below!