MONKEY HOUSE GAMES, LLC
CRYSTAL LAKE, IL

MONKEY HOUSE GAMES was formed by The name “Monkey House Games” was inspired by an in-joke that Jeff & Jack shared way back in the 1980’s, referring to one another as “game designers raised by apes”. JEFF DEE has worked in the gaming industry for over 25 years. His artwork appeared in numerous games and magazines, including TSR’s Deities and Demigods (as well as many AD&D modules and other early TSR products), adventures for the Star Wars RPG from West End Games, and others. He co-designed Villains & Vigilantes, TWERPS (The World’s Easiest Role-Playing System) from Gamescience, and Pocket Universe from UNIgames. Jeff has also worked in the computer games industry on games such as Ultima VI, Master of Orion, Master of Magic, and Wing Commander. He was the art director on Ultima VII, and the lead game designer on The Sims: Castaway Stories. Jeff currently works as a freelance artist and game design consultant and operates a paper game publishing company, Monkey House Games, with V&V co-creator Jack Herman. JACK HERMAN has written for comics and games for over 25 years. His comics writing has appeared in Elementals, Robotech: The Macross Saga, Robotech: The New Generation, Eagle, Death’s Head, The Terminator, Battleforce, Operative Scorpio, Ratman, Oblivion, Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs, Psycho Killers, ZombieBomb, and Bela Lugosi’s Tales From The Grave. He has worked on computer games such as Ultima VII, Wing Commander II Special Operations 2, Serpent Isle, Bioforge and Super Hind- Explosive Helicopter Action. He is the co-designer of Villains and Vigilantes, and author of the V&V books Most Wanted Volume One, and the DNAgents Sourcebook. Jack works occasionally as a freelance writer and game design consultant, and operates a paper game publishing company, Monkey House Games, with V&V co-creator Jeff Dee. Jeff and Jack went to Gen Con in 1978 with their first hand-printed manuscript and introduced themselves to the publisher of Fantasy Games Unlimited Inc. FGU was a small company that had some success with the medieval fantasy role-playing game Chivalry and Sorcery and was establishing a reputation as an eclectic publisher. As a result of that meeting, Jack and Jeff received a contract from FGU to publish their game, which was released in 1979. Being a gifted artist and an early student of the Kubert School, run by legendary comic book artist Joe Kubert, Jeff did the illustrations himself. Villains and Vigilantes quickly became a top seller at FGU. Judges Guild, a company that published support material for such games as Dungeons and Dragons and Traveller, produced the first authorized V&V adventure “Break-In at Three Kilometer Island” in 1981. As the Villains and Vigilantes product line continued to grow, Jack and Jeff used the attention to break into the comics business, which was then booming due to the establishment of the direct market. Meanwhile, their game continued to attract numerous writers and artists who were, or who would become, established figures in the comics and gaming industries. Bill Willingham (whose “Elementals” superhero comic series would feature elaborations on characters from his V&V adventures) created the multiple Eisner Award-winning and NY Times Best-Selling “Fables” graphic novel series. Tom Dowd (”FORCE”, “Assassin”) is now an online game designer and a professor of Interactive Arts at Chicago’s Columbia College. Stefan Jones (“Opponents Unlimited”, “Pentacle Plot”, “From the Deeps of Space”) writes for Steve Jackson Games, including an extensive amount of material for GURPS. Steve Crow (“Battle Above the Earth”, “Terror By Night”) wrote numerous books for White Wolf, Alderac Entertainment, and Mayfair Games’ DC Comics RPG. Jeff O’Hare (“To Tackle the TOTEM”, “For the Greater Good”) wrote for Mayfair, I.C.E. and numerous other publishers. Troy Christensen (“Dawn of the Devil”, “Most Wanted, Volume 3”, “The Devil’s Domain”) created the fantasy RPG Phantasm Adventures. Stephen Dedman (“Pre-Emptive Strike”, “The Great Iridium Con”) wrote for GURPS and had several novels published. Ken Cliffe (“Organized Crimes”, “Honor”, “Alone into the Night”, “Super Crooks and Criminals”) and Stewart Weick (“Secret in the Swamp”) became key players in the ascendance of RPG giant White Wolf. In 1986 Jack and Jeff created a four issue Villains and Vigilantes comic book mini-series published by Eclipse Comics. The series was an adaptation of their original “Crisis at Crusader Citadel” adventure and introduced two new superheroes, Shatterman and Condor. The V&V comic received more reader letters that Eclipse’s best-selling titles at the time. Although V&V continued to have a devoted player base, by 1987, Fantasy Games Unlimited Inc. had completely ceased advertising, distribution and new releases for the V&V product line. The company was ultimately dissolved by the state of New York in 1991. In 2005 Jeff Dee released a new superhero role-playing game, Living Legends, which took place in the original Villains and Vigilantes universe and utilized those characters with permission of Jack Herman. Living Legends differed from Villains and Vigilantes in that it featured a point-based character generation system. It had two adventures released to support it: “Intercrime: Hostile Takeover” by Dee, and “Blood Ties” written by John Karnay. Monkey House Games released three free products: the adventure “Oil Pressure” and the playing aid “Wheels within Wheels” both by Talzhemir, and “Infinity Lounge” by Stefan Jones with art by Tod Allen Smith. Dee and Herman reunited for “In Broad Daylight”, the first new original authorized-for-sale Villains and Vigilantes adventure in 23 years, which was released in December 2010. Monkey House Games also acquired the exclusive publication rights for Bill Willingham’s “Death Duel with the Destroyers” and “Island of Doctor Apocalypse”. “Foe File #01: Omni-Primus” the first in a series of 99 cent supervillains, was released in February 2011.