WELCOME TO ROMANCEOPOLIS CITY
Click here for a printable version of this document
If there are two things that the gals at Under the Covers Book Blog and Peace Love Books adore it’s the cutthroat world of Monopoly and the pleasure of diving into a romance novel. So, we thought why not combine the ruthless focus of a rousing game of Monopoly with our love of diverse and wonderful world of the romance genre? And so, in a gloomy castle with a great Wi-Fi signal, a flash of lightening and much evil cackling the 2019 Romance-opoly book challenge was born.
FIRST STEP
We want to make sure we are all connected throughout the year while doing this challenge. So take the first step and fill out the registration form. This will add you to the list of participants that stays up on this website and is available to anyone that is part of the Romanceopoly family! We encourage you to visit the participants list and follow the accounts that are taking part in this challenge.
BUTTON
If you have a blog or website and want to display the Romance-opoly Participant button, here it is! Either right click on the image below, save and upload to your own site to use (and link back to http://www.romanceopoly.com) OR just use the code provided below to paste on your site.
WHAT YOU NEED
To join in our 2019 Romance-opoly book challenge you will need a couple of things. Don’t worry, nothing you probably don’t already have! Anything bespoke, we have made for you and is free to download through our Printables section. All download links can be found here.
- Romance-opoly board
- Romance-opoly tracker board
- Romance-opoly Guide Sheet (this document!)
- Romance-opoly Idea Cards
- Dice, or if you don’t have dice here’s some free online dice!
- Pens, pencils, stickers…all you really need is a pen, but feel free to make the progress tracker as pretty or as functional as you like!
CALENDAR
Sometimes it’s easy to miss an important date and since some of our challenges have specific dates, we’ve created a calendar for you to access at any time. You can see what “dated” challenges are going on, what’s coming up, and when things are announced. Click here to access it now.
HOW TO PLAY
If you haven’t seen the Romance-opoly board yet, please download! We have adapted a traditional Monopoly board and tweaked it so it fit our nefarious purpose. Welcome to the fictional city of Romanceopolis!
Each neighbourhood in Romanceopolis offers up a new genre to explore and each street has a unique challenge within that genre. Although, some neighbourhoods are a little more diverse and offer a melting pot of different genres to delve into.
As well as the neighbourhoods we also have the Libraries, Mystery, Emergency Services, Subway, Transportation, Coffee Stops and like all the other delights of Romance-opoly which we have twisted them for our purpose. A full explanation of what each square requires will be in the next section.
If you are wondering how to count re-reads and books that fulfil more than one square, here’s the info: Re-reads won’t count for this challenge, so pick all new books to explore! Also, books can only count for one challenge so choose wisely.
MOVEMENT AROUND THE BOARD
There are two ways you can play Romance-opoly:
*Please note all movement is in a clockwise direction.
THE DIRECT ROUTE:
Starting at “Go” you explore Romanceopolis one street at a time, never skipping a square and coming back to it. Instead you go in order around the board. This means that you only go around the board once to complete the challenge.
The only exception to this may be the “Mystery” and “Coffee Shop” squares, where the challenges have specific dates to be completed in.
THE SCENIC ROUTE:
For this route you will need some dice and you start at the “Go” square.
Roll the dice (just like in Monopoly use 2) and move yourself forward the number of squares you have rolled. Wherever you land is the book you will be reading.
- If you land on a square you have already completed, go to the next unread square
- If you roll a double, just like in Monopoly you have a choice whether you want to roll again or stay on the square you have landed on. If you land on square you’ve already read, you must roll again as the above rule about going to the next unread square doesn’t apply.
WHATEVER METHOD YOU USE, WHETHER YOU ARE GOING STREET BY STREET OR CHANCING IT WITH THE DICE, KEEP US UP TO DATE ON SOCIAL MEDIA USING #ROMANCEOPOLY!
LEVELS
Romanceopolis is a big city. There are a lot of streets, not to mention stations, tax offices and community chests. We don’t want it to be too daunting if you don’t have the time to visit every nook and cranny. So, we have constructed some levels for this challenge, so you can still complete it, even if you don’t do every square.
Now, you may start off as one level and either go up or down, that’s not an issue. You may even find yourself between levels…that’s cool too.
Let us know how you’re getting on! We plan on doing a fantastic giveaway at the end of 2019, with a prize for each level, so just make sure you keep your tracker board up to date so you can enter.
THE TOURIST
Neighbourhood Squares: Instead of completing every challenge in each neighbourhood, you only need to do one. For example, the Orange Neighbourhood – you only need to complete Sweet Street OR Bad Boy Circus OR Erotic Eaves.
Non-Neighbourhood Squares: Complete the Library squares
Total Books: 11
THE WANDERER
Neighbourhood Squares: Instead of completing every challenge in each neighbourhood, you only need to do two. For example, the Red Neighbourhood – complete two streets out of Warriors Way, Magic Row and Creature Crescent
Non-Neighbourhood Squares: Complete the Library squares, Subway squares
Total Books: 21
THE ADVENTURER
Neighbourhood Squares: You must complete every street in each neighbourhood
Non-Neighbourhood Squares: Complete the Library squares, Subway squares, Transportation squares
Total Books: 29
THE NATIVE
Complete all the squares on the board, every street in the Neighbourhoods and all the non-Neighbourhood squares, including completing the Mystery Challenges and the Coffee Stops.
Total Books: 39
DATED CHALLENGES
MYSTERY CHALLENGES
SOCIAL CHALLENGES
BOARD CHALLENGES
It’s time to figure out what each “street” means! Click here to see what your reading challenges are.
TRACKING YOUR PROGRESS
No matter what route you use or level your aiming for, you will need to track your progress. Although you can track this however you wish, we have provided you with a Romance-opoly Tracking Board.
With the tracking board, you can write in the book you read on each square and we encourage you to get as creative as you want in keeping your tracking board up to date. Colour, stickers, doodles, drawing… we endorse it all and we will certainly be doing the same. Be as flamboyant and imaginative as you can!
We would also love it if you kept us up to date on your progress on social media! We will definitely be sharing our progress boards through social media, the blog and YouTube.
GIVEAWAYS
We’ve already mentioned that there will be a winner for each of the social media challenges mentioned above. That’s 4 winners and the prizes will be announced at a later date. These are purely social media challenges and the winners will be announced on UTC and PLB social channels a few days after the final date of each challenge. These social giveaways are sponsored by UTC and PLB.
But aside from those 4 chances to win, you can also win prizes by doing the actual reading! We will only give you one simple way to enter these giveaways and that is by submitting a picture of your tracker boards at the end of the challenge.
TO ENTER, SIMPLY POST A PICTURE OF YOUR COMPLETED TRACKER BOARD ON SOCIAL MEDIA USING THE HASHTAG #ROMANCEOPOLYBOARD ANY TIME DURING 12/26/19 – 12/31/19
We are excited to be partnering with Berkley Romance this year as our Romanceopoly Sponsor! That means the 4 giveaways you can enter at the end of the year for the actual reading are sponsored by them. Prizes will be announced later in the year.
We will be randomly picking one winner for each of the Levels mentioned before. So 1 Tourist, 1 Wanderer, 1 Adventurer and 1 Native. And we encourage you to get creative with your boards and submission pics because we will also be picking a winner for the Best Decorated Board!
The winners for these final giveaways will be announced 1/3/2020.
