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 Romance-opoly book challenge was born.
Button
If you have a blog or website and want to display the Romance-opoly Participant button, here it is! Right click on the image below, save and upload to your own site to use (and link back to http://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/2019/12/participant.jpg" alt="Romanceopoly 2020 Participant"></a>What you need
To participate in Romanceopoly 2020 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. All download links can be found here.
- Romanceopoly board
- Romanceopoly tracker board
- Romanceopoly challenge cards
- Romanceopoly rules (this document)
- 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 Romanceopoly 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.
You may be wondering where classic stops like Chance, Jail, Free Parking, Community Chest, Tax and Stations have gone….but worry not! We have adapted them to fit into the urban landscape of Romanceopolis!
A full explanation of what each square requires will be in The Challenges section.
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.
The only exception to this is the Seasonal squares, where the challenges open at different points in the year. More details on the individual challenges are in The Challenges section.
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
We have learnt a lot from 2019’s Romanceopoly challenge. One of those things is that you guys are AMAZING! You out-read everyone here on the Romanceopoly team. So, we saw this as a challenge. How can we make this more exciting and slightly more difficult for you *evil cackle*, so we decided to offer you a chance to go around the board again…and so you don’t get bored repeating challenges we have 2 sets of challenges for you.
Moon Challenges and Sun Challenges
We have named the two different sets of challenges: Moon and Sun. You can peruse the different challenges that belong with each set and decide which one you want to go around the board with first. Some challenges, like the Seasonal ones, will remain the same for Moon and Sun but most of them are different. To see the challenge sets go to The Challenges section
So, now I have explained about the two sets of challenges, here are the new difficulty levels:
The Tourist
Neighbourhood squares: Rather than doing the individual challenge, just read a book within the genre of the square you have landed on.
Non-Neighbourhood Squares: All the non-neighbourhood squares are free choice…read whatever you fancy!
The Adventurer
Go around the board once completing all the challenges as set by either the Moon or Sun challenge pack.
The Native
Go around the board twice completing all the challenges as set by the Moon and Sun challenge pack.
Of course…the important thing is to have fun, so if you want to meander from one difficulty level to another, please do! Our aim is to get you reading books you might normally overlook and have a great time whilst doing it.
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 Romanceopoly Tracking Board.
With the tracking board, you can write in the book your 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!
We would also love it if you kept us up to date on your progress on social media! We will be sharing our progress through social media, the blog and YouTube.
Board Challenges
Are you ready to see what the challenges are on this year’s board? Click here to find out.
