Monkey love

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!

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Newt

Games Designer, Publisher, Web Developer, Dad.

4 thoughts on “Monkey love”

  1. Monkey feels like a stand-alone product to me. As it’s based on generally available source material, there isn’t much need to do a sourcebook or adventures.

    There is much discussion elsewhere on using Lulu as a sales outlet (as opposed to just a print shop). Maybe get enough printed to get it listed on IPR instead?

    I haven’t yet read the copy I snagged at Furnace, but I may well put it on the list of games I take to Conception.

    – Neil.

  2. Monkey as a standalone is probably how I want to do it, and in fact its always how I’ve envisioned it, so its nice to have someone else validate that.

    I already have a Lulu storefront (http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1049551) and IPR has been pointed out to me repeatly by Tim. Must do something about that (and one bookself too)

    If you are luckly the revised version will be out by XMAS, so you could use that at Conception 🙂

  3. Well, you really need a poopreaper.

    I kind of got stuck on that, as you know, and it made it hard to appreciate the rest of the book. It looked like the examples you gave captured the fun side of it pretty well, which is vital – it just needs to be tightened up.

    I agree that it feels like a standalone product.

    What you need to get it published: draft of text that’s mostly there; stick it into layout; get a sample copy printed off at Lulu (even if you don’t do your main printing there) and hold it in your hands; move on to polishing. I can see it as 6x9in or even that quarto size Neil used for Duty & Honour (but not Letter).

    Look at Lulu as a print channel, not a sales channel. More accurately, you can sell through it but you have to do all the work of driving people there, whereas RPG-specific sales sites will provide you with an interested market. As I’ve said before, this project screams IPR to me.

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