The Monkey RPG

Overview | Screenshots | Downloads | Development | Contact

Overview

Monkey (a.k.a. Monkey Magic) is a Japanese television show from the late 70's and early 80's, which was also featured on UK and Australian TV. Monkey is an adaptation of the famous Chinese novel Journey to the West written during the Ming Dynasty (c1500-1582). The best place to learn more about the Monkey TV series is Monkey Heaven.

These series of pages provide an initial home for an attempt at building a Monkey Computer Role Playing Game (CRPG) using the open-source Exult Ultima 7 engine. Exult provides a basis for running Origin's role playing games Ultima VII and Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle on modern computers, and supports the development of new, stand-alone games through the provision of fully functional tools such as a world editor and scripting language.

The pages are also - in a sense - a call for help or expressions of interest in contributing to the development of a Monkey Role Playing Game.

So why make a Monkey RPG?...
As any fan of the series knows, Monkey is a classic television show and story, and one which I feel possesses several key elements which would make an excellent role playing game:

Party-based adventure on a grand scale (the goal being to travel from China to India to retrieve Buddhist scriptures).
Unique, interesting, and autonomous characters (Monkey, Pigsy, Sandy, Tripitaka) - each with their own special strengths and weaknesess - and with loads of interactions ranging from comedic to emotional.
An excellent story with countless sub-plots and quests, and packed full of drama, combat, adventure, comedy, comradeship, emotion, philosophy, ethical lessons, ... the list goes on :)
Cute magic tricks and lateral solutions to problems (Monkey transforming into a bee; Monkey making himself small so as to fit into a monster's mouth and defeat it from inside it's stomach, etc.)
A vast array of monsters and foes to vanquish, and they are often multi-dimensional (monsters have feelings too, you know :)
Cloud-flying... need I say more? ;)
It's based on a very popular and well-known story, and thus would be a popular RPG.

And why Exult? Well, it facilitates a whole range of features and possibilities well-suited to a Monkey RPG:

The creation of worlds with the breathtaking level of interactivity and flexibility seen in Ultima 7 / Serpent Isle, which I consider to be amongst the best RPGs of all time.
Providing a "living, breathing" world via full NPC schedules and their ability to manipulate objects themselves, etc.
Top-down (pseudo-isometric) viewpoint great for party-based adventuring.
A fully featured set of editing tools.
Dedicated open-source community and support base

So, browse these pages a little, and if you're a fan of Monkey (and even better, of both Monkey and Ultima 7) then I hope to eventually begin collaborative development on such a project, and hope you can help with development! :)