How did Monopoly get a reputation as a game that goes on forever?

[Freddy the Pig]

Since I was a child, Monopoly has had a reputation as a game that takes forever to play. When I'd play as a kid, my mother would say, "Well, you'll be occupied for the next three days". In our recent threads about the game, people made jokes to the same effect.

But, none of my games ever took that long. In fact, none of them took very long at all. Generally, after we'd gone around the board a few times, and landed on most of the properties, one person would have the most color groups. That person would get their houses and hotels up first, and pretty soon the unluckiest player would be forced into bankruptcy.

Then the player who forced them out collects their assets and starts redeeming the mortgages. That makes that player even stronger, and pretty soon the board would be ringed with houses and hotels and every player except one went bankrupt in short order.

Were your games different? Did you have to put in place "house rules" to make them last longer? I didn't get it as a kid, and I still don't get it now.

[Koxinga]

Don't know if it was any kind of house rule, but as kids we chose to ignore the provision that (IIRC) you're supposed to buy any unoccupied piece of land that you happen to land on. There were a number of vacant lots well into the middle of our games, which did take a while to play.

[Malodorous]

Then the player who forced them out collects their assets and starts redeeming the mortgages. That makes that player even stronger, and pretty soon the board would be ringed with houses and hotels and every player except one went bankrupt in short order.

This is one of the reasons for the reputation, I think. Not only do the games tend to go on, but they go on for a long time even after its become pretty evident who is going to win. It's hard to keep interest in a game whose outcome is determined 30 turns before it actually ends, and so the endgame seems drawn out even if it isn't that long in real time.

[Inner Stickler]

People play the Free Parking Rules. All the money from fees and whatnot go on the free parking square and whoever lands there gets it all. It's nice if you're needing a windfall but it does lengthen the game considerably.

[GorillaMan]

It depends which rules you follow. Silly additions such as the free parking jackpot can drag things on for ever. Not auctioning unpurchased properties makes for a verrrrry slow start to the game. The trouble is, these kind of things are encouraged by the same 'oh, but it gives everyone a chance' mothers who then complain about the game lasting too long.

[A.R. Cane]

It's been quite awhile since I've played, but I seem to remember a typical game taking an hour or two. Plus I often heard it referred to as 'Monotony', so the similarity of the two words encouraged the idea.

[CarnalK]

When you say your games weren't very long at all, what do you mean? Everywhere I've looked seems to give a 60-180 minute playing time. I'm not a huge fan of board games so an hour seems plenty long enough for me, 3 hours would definitely feel like "forever". That's a lot of games of Cribbage, ISTM.

[TheLoadedDog]

This is one of the reasons for the reputation, I think. Not only do the games tend to go on, but they go on for a long time even after its become pretty evident who is going to win. It's hard to keep interest in a game whose outcome is determined 30 turns before it actually ends, and so the endgame seems drawn out even if it isn't that long in real time.

Exactly. That's what I came in here to post, said more succinctly than I would have.

[Freddy the Pig]

Not only do the games tend to go on, but they go on for a long time even after its become pretty evident who is going to win. It's hard to keep interest in a game whose outcome is determined 30 turns before it actually ends, and so the endgame seems drawn out even if it isn't that long in real time.I'll buy that. I distinctly remember the "agony of defeat" when you were about to be eliminated, ringing the board over and over and knowing it was just a matter of time until you landed on one of the other guy's nine hotels and got your clock cleaned.

[Nametag]

Monopoly lasts a long time compared to games which have a more definite end point. Most board games of the Monopoly era had a definite end point right there on the board, and the company first approached by Monopoly's creator turned it down for this reason, among others.

More games these days seem to be of the Monopoly type; Trivial Pursuit can go on endlessly if no one knows anything. I remember a old Harlan Ellison rant about arcade video games, and how kids were learning that you can never win in life because you can never win the games -- they just get harder (to which anyone with wit would have replied, "yeah, just like PINBALL! The goal is to make that quarter last forever").

So no, compared to most games played by adults these days, Monopoly doesn't last all that long.

[Arnold Winkelried]

I'll just reinforce what others have said.
As a kid, I never even knew about the "auction off a property if the person landing on it doesn't want to buy it." That made the game longer.
We never did a lot of trading so that made it hard to get all the properties of the same colour.
Once there is a dominant player, the minority player can still survive a long time by returning houses to the bank, mortagaging property, etc.
Finally, of all the board games we played, Monopoly was the game that took us the longest time to finish.

[Shakes]

I just can't believe they're getting rid of the cash in Monopoly.

[GorillaMan]

I'll buy that. I distinctly remember the "agony of defeat" when you were about to be eliminated, ringing the board over and over and knowing it was just a matter of time until you landed on one of the other guy's nine hotels and got your clock cleaned.
Yes, and I've even encountered people who insist that everybody keeps rolling the dice and moving their piece, even though they're bankrupt, because they might land on Free Parking. :rolleyes:

[The Understander]

Yes, and I've even encountered people who insist that everybody keeps rolling the dice and moving their piece, even though they're bankrupt, because they might land on Free Parking. :rolleyes:

There's a special place In Jail for blasphemers like that!

Do you counter with the variation that if a bankrupt player playing this rule lands on your property, you get to break his/her kneecaps?

[Thudlow Boink]

Even if played properly, Monopoly takes longer to play than most other games that are played by kids and/or that have been popular for generations. So, for any given person who has ever played Monopoly, the chances are good that their first experience with the game was that it lasted significantly longer than any other game they had ever played before.

[RealityChuck]

I agree that house rules tend to lengthen the game; if you stick with the official rules, it plays longer than many games, but not interminally.

It also help the more players you have, or if you use the Miracle Monopoly Cheating Kit®.

[amarinth]

House rules really lengthen the game. If you don't auction everything when it's first landed on, and if you give away money all the time (I hate "free parking" giveaways. That's just lame.), people simply don't lose quickly.

There are much longer games out there. I think my siblings and I once played "The Farming Game" for a week.

[GorillaMan]

Do you counter with the variation that if a bankrupt player playing this rule lands on your property, you get to break his/her kneecaps?
Yes....if they insist on still playing, they also need to fetch drinks as appropriate ;)

[Moriarty]

And if you allow embezzling money from the bank, it'll extend even longer.

[Flutterby]

I can't recall taking anything less than 3 hours when we played regularly.

Even putting it away and going to bed after 4 hours..

[Rysto]

This is one of the reasons for the reputation, I think. Not only do the games tend to go on, but they go on for a long time even after its become pretty evident who is going to win. It's hard to keep interest in a game whose outcome is determined 30 turns before it actually ends, and so the endgame seems drawn out even if it isn't that long in real time.
Whenever I play Monopoly we've always just given in once the game reaches this point.

[Zebra]

I once had this interesting Monopoly add-on that made the game a lot quicker and more interesting.

It was an electronic dice device that laid in the center of the board. You pressed a button and it had a smaller representation of the board and it it showed where you moved. Anyway, it enforced that every property landed upon had to be bought. If the person who landed on it didn't want it, it would go up for auction. The person who did land on can bid and hope to buy it for less than face value.

Then, after all properties were bought it would start to call groups, like the orange group, or the green group.

If you owned a majority of that group you kept them. If you owned only one, you had to sell it to the bank and it would then go up for auction. This made people have groups quckly. But if someone just bought to consolidate a group, they probably didn't have enough money when the next group came up.

It did a few other things, like loan money for improvements that would come due and be a major setback for someone who built up too fast and then didn't get enough guests.

[madmonk28]

I don't remember ever actually completing a game of Monopoly when I was a kid.

[Audrey Levins]

I'm with MadMonk. Monopoly was the game we'd pull out occasionally when we forgot how long it took the last time we tried to play it.

I never read the official rules. I just went by the rules I was told. We always had the free parking money. The game went on forever. After an hour or two we'd inevitably get too bored to finish it.

I bought the game as an adult and did indeed finish every game, but they still lasted over an hour.

I like word games like Taboo way more than board games like Monopoly.

[Nzinga, Seated]

I just can't believe they're getting rid of the cash in Monopoly.


What? Oh, I doubt that. Surely that would cause them to have to discontinue it all together.

[Hostile Dialect]

I just realized that I haven't played a board game since I reached the age of majority. Damn, I need more old-fashioned friends.

[pulykamell]

I can't recall taking anything less than 3 hours when we played regularly.

Even putting it away and going to bed after 4 hours..

It's been awhile, but I seem to remember games going about 2 hours or so with four or five players. I'm sure there was a lot of wasted time with conversation and the such, but we never played with any of the typical house rules, and we did auction properties.

However, it's nowhere near as long as Risk.

[Indistinguishable]

Sadly, it won't keep going on much longer. I heard it's being phased out in favor of some new electronic replacement.

[Malacandra]

It's been awhile, but I seem to remember games going about 2 hours or so with four or five players. I'm sure there was a lot of wasted time with conversation and the such, but we never played with any of the typical house rules, and we did auction properties.

However, it's nowhere near as long as Risk.

Amateur! Diplomacy's what you're after. :p I've just finished a pbemail that's been going all year.

[CalMeacham]

As a kid, I never even knew about the "auction off a property if the person landing on it doesn't want to buy it." That made the game longer.


Same here. We didn't use that silly "Free Parking" rule most of the time (it depended who you played with), but, whether you did or you didn't, the damned game took forever to play. We NEVER had houses or hotels up after only a few runs around the board. It took forever for anyone to get a whole color block, because we always tried to block anyone geting a Monopoly on a block, since as soon as you do, even without improvements, rents go up.

It can't all be the lack of the auction rukles -- it always toook us mnany turns before all the properties were even landed on.


We've played recently, too (my brother-in-law is a compulsive Monopoly collector -- he's got scads of different-themed games)


but I've NEVER played a short game of Monopoly.

[GorillaMan]

It can't all be the lack of the auction rukles -- it always toook us mnany turns before all the properties were even landed on.
Were you disallowing trading of properties? In my experience, that's how the first colour blocks get developed, by a mutually-beneficial deal between two players.

[CalMeacham]

Were you disallowing trading of properties? In my experience, that's how the first colour blocks get developed, by a mutually-beneficial deal between two players.


No, but people were reluctant to give their opponents control of a block, even if they were able to get one themselves in that fashion.

[Cluricaun]

It took forever for anyone to get a whole color block, because we always tried to block anyone geting a Monopoly on a block, since as soon as you do, even without improvements, rents go up.


This is usually what happened in our house too. One of my brothers would have the one property you needed to get your Monopoly, and would refuse to sell it to you. After a few turns of saying “C’mon fucker, sell me Illinois Ave! I’ll give you $1500 for it!” and him refusing the game would dissolve into a wrestling match and my mom would yell at us to go outside.

[Harriet the Spry]

We always played with Free Parking and no auctions, so it definitely took forever. Also, a lot of my games were only two player. That really dampens the potential to trade properties, since one person is usually pretty obviously screwing themself in the deal.

[Flutterby]

It's been awhile, but I seem to remember games going about 2 hours or so with four or five players.

That could be our problem too. I've never played it with more than 3 people (generally myself, my brother and an adult).

Besides, we were more inclined to play Gin Rummy, Canasta, Hearts, Scrabble or WordUp.

I miss that. :(

[wolfman]

Part of the problem with it is the way it eliminates people at different times. Some body gets kicked out 15 minutes in, while the others are setting in for a long time. If it's the youngest kid, which it usually seems to be, they havn't developed the patience to sit and watch a game they arn't part of without disruption.

So to keep the peace, house rules and fudge-factors develop that stop people from getting kicked out too early, which ends up with making it nearly impossible to for anybody to lose ever, and the game never ends.

AT least that was how it developed with everygroup I tried to play it with.

[pulykamell]

Were you disallowing trading of properties? In my experience, that's how the first colour blocks get developed, by a mutually-beneficial deal between two players.

Playing Monopoly without trading is like playing soccer without feet. Sure, you might be able to finish a game through dumb luck, but pretty much the entire point and interest of the game is in the trading. If your brother doesn't want to trade you Illinois, screw him. Find somebody else to make a trade, conspire with opponents against him, and that solves itself.

Monopoly is 99% about creative trading. For example, and only crappy players fall for this, the Orange and the Red properties are considered the best monopolies to have in terms of how frequently they're landed on, the cost of improvements, etc. (Well, unless you have a big bankroll--that's when the Greens and Yellows are more attractive). If I have Boardwalk, and somebody has Park Place, I'll trade them Boardwalk to finish my Orange or Red monopoly. And, since for amateurs Boardwalk-Park Place seem to have an overvalued reputation, I'll try to get some cash in the trade, too. So, I give them an expensive monopoly, suck them dry of cash for improvements, and meanwhile I'm gleefully building houses away on my Orange or Reds.

You just have to use your bargaining and salesmanship skills to convince people to trade with you. If they don't want to trade with you, then go bark up another tree. If you're only playing two players, well, that's a problem. I don't think Monopoly is interesting unless you have at least four players (three is doable, but the fourth player really adds the extra dynamic.)

[JThunder]

I just can't believe they're getting rid of the cash in Monopoly.Good grief. That would kill the game.

[shelbo]

There was a great free internet version of Monopoly that I played for a while. The computer took care of the rolling, moving, cash management, auctions, etc., so it went really fast. It made it so quick and easy to mortgage properties to borrow money that it changed the nature of the game entirely. Really fun.

[Emilio Lizardo]

My friends and I used to play "stone-opoly." Every time you passed Go, you got $200 and a bong hit. Those were some loooooonnnnggggg games.