I’ve recently read Monkey: The Storytelling Game of the Journey to the West by Newt Newport and d101 Games. It’s a game emulating the Chinese story of exiled immortals seeking to redeem themselves among mortals and re-enter Heaven. It seeks to capture the humor and emotion of its source material by using a unified rules set focused on story and the accumulation of virtue.
My friend Peter recommended and lended it to me because it uses playing cards in its resolution. I have tied myself in knots with different playing card mechanics for House of Cards before finally shifting over to my current blackjack dice mechanic. Something about cards still appeals to me, so I always appreciate the opportunity to see how a game handles them.
Monkey does an admirable job of embracing both the random and strategic possibilities of using cards. On the one hand, when resolving a conflict a player draws a number of cards from the top of their deck and must choose to total the values of either their red or black cards, discarding the other. However, each player also has the option to save a limited number of cards in a separate Fortune Hand to use in later conflicts. This element of planning and resource management nicely enhances players’ odds – reflecting the power of their characters.
That said, there are some editing troubles that leave portions of the system less than clear. For example, different places in the book discuss simply adding a card from your Fortune Hand to your result or swapping a card from your result and Fortune Hand. One passage discusses immediately drawing a card into your Fortune Hand at the beginning of the game, while another states your Fortune Hand starts out empty.
Another concern is over the use and accumulation of Fortune, which is used to reward good acts in the fiction, but characters also can lose Fortune for performing bad acts (these lost Fortune then become GM currency to use against you later).
First, your current Fortune level determines the maximum size of your Fortune Hand – the key to your strategic use of cards. Second, Fortune can be spent for dramatic editing to the fiction. Finally, Fortune is spent to advance your character. All told, Fortune seems like it is being given too many functions, several of which can lead to contradictory incentives for players.
I’m happy to have read Monkey, and I may find aspects of its mechanics inspiring my further tinkering with cards in my own designs. I’m also interested in seeing how the game works in actual play, but with so many games on my shelf competing for my attention, I’m not sure whether this will actually happen.
