ready to play
romanceopoly with us?
this the page that will answer all your questions on how you play, what you need to start, how to track your progress
Click here for a printable version of this document
About Romanceopoly
Romance books and board games…two things we adore over at Under the Covers book blog. So, we wanted to create a romance reading challenge that combined the fun of a board game with our love of romance books and all the wonderful subgenres it contains.
And so, in a gloomy castle – aka terraced house in England and a house in Florida – with a great Wi-Fi signal, a flash of lightning and much evil cackling the Romanceopoly Yearly reading challenge was born.
What is Romanceopoly?
Romaceopoly is a yearly reading challenge where you throw some dice and travel around the Romanceopoly board. What romance book you read next is decided by which square you land on as each square has a reading challenge associated to it. You complete the Romanceopoly yearly reading challenge when you have completed every challenge on the Romanceopoly board within the year (01 January – 31 December).
What Do I Need for Romanceopoly?
To participate in Romanceopoly you will need a couple of things. Don’t worry, the chances are you already have most of these things. Anything bespoke, we have made for you and is free to download.
- Romanceopoly board
- Progress tracker – digital or a printable
- Romanceopoly challenge cards
- Romanceopoly rules (this document!)
- Something to use as a playing piece – it can be something cool you’ve found or just penny you found in your pocket.
- Dice, or if you don’t have dice, here’s some free online dice!
- Pens, pencils, sticker…all you really need is a pen, but feel free to make the progress tracker as pretty or as functional as you like.
Download the digital tracker and all printables including the 2023 Romanceopoly board
How Do I Play Romanceopoly?
So, you know what Romanceopoly is, you have your printables ready. Now it’s time to play! Welcome to the fictional city of Romanceopolis, where meet cutes abound and there’s romance and libraries around every corner.
Each neighbourhood in Romanceopolis offers up a new genre to explore and each street has a unique challenge for you to tackle within that genre.
A full explanation of what each square requires will be The Challenges section.
To play, you move round the board (as described below) and where you land, you pick up the card for that street. On each card will be a reading challenge, you then read a book matching that challenge. Once you’ve done that you’ve completed that square and you can cross if off on your progress tracker.
There are number of different options, which we talk about below which will help you customise this challenge to your comfort levels, including of how much time you have and how much flexibility you want with your challenges. The options explained below are:
- How you move around the Romanceopoly board
- Challenge difficulty
- Number of challenges
How to Move Around the Romanceopoly Board
Movement is always in a clockwise direction, but there are two ways you can move around the Romanceopoly board:
The Direct route
There are no dice required to play Romanceopoly this way.
Starting at Go, you explore Romanceopolis one street at a time, never skipping a square and coming back to it. Instead, you go around the board in order, one street at a time.
The Scenic route
This is the more traditional route that will require dice – or die, it’s up to you!
Starting at Go, roll the dice and move yourself forward the number of squares you have rolled. Wherever you land is the challenge you will be facing.
If you’re using two dice and roll a double (both die show the same number) you have a choice: roll again and take a chance on what your next challenge will be or stick to the square you have landed on.
Using this method you are likely to go round the board a few times so:
- If you land on a square you have already completed, go to the next unread square
Romanceopoly Challenge Options
We appreciate that sometimes there just isn’t enough time to complete everything, or you really just don’t like the trope or particular challenge that you’ve landed on. So, there are options when it comes to the difficulty of the challenge and the number of challenges you set yourself.
Challenge difficulty
Each card has two options that you can choose to make the challenge easier or more challenging for you:
- You read any book in the genre specified on the card
- You do the reading challenge stated on the card within the genre specified on the card
The exception to this is the Library card, which is free choice – read whatever you want in any genre!
Number of Challenges
You will notice that there are two types of challenge cards:
- Coloured neighbourhood cards – there are 22 of these
- Non-neighbourhood cards: Around Town, Corner and Seasonal cards – there are 14 of these
- All challenge cards – 36 in total
If you want to reduce the number of book books you want to do for this challenge rather than doing both types of cards, just to one type of the other. If you find you have more time, you can always come back and start on the other cards!
Ready to take a look at the challenges?
How Do I Track my Progress
Whether you are doing all the challenges or Neighbourhood challenges only, you want to be able to track your progress around Romanceopolis.
You can track this however you fancy; however, we have created some progress trackers you can use:
- On Storygraph
- A digital tracker
- A Romanceopoly tracking board – you can write in the book you read on each square. If you’re feeling creative you can doodle, use stickers, draw, colour…whatever you want to do to make it look pretty. Or not, it’s up to you!
Download the digital tracker and all printables including the 2023 Romanceopoly board
Display Your Participation in Romanceopoly
If you have a blog or website and want to display the Romanceopoly Participant button, here it is! Right click on the image below, save and upload to your own site to use (and link back to https://www.romanceopoly.com) or use the code provided below.
<a href="http://www.romanceopoly.com" target="new"><img src="https://romanceopoly.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2023-romanceopoly-participant-e1661633356399.png" alt="Romanceopoly 2023 Participant"></a>