One of my all-time favorite games is Monopoly. I used to play it constantly with my grandparents whenever I visit. Unfortunately, it got to be old after a while, seeing as there aren’t a whole lot of options for the game. I still like Monopoly, but I want something more complex with more substance and intrigue. I was having a discussion with The Tim a few days ago about things that could be done by the average human to make Monopoly a cooler game.
Railroad monopolies. If you own one of the two pairs of railroads that are on opposite sides of the board, you can hop from one to the other. You can only do this if the railroad comes up in the middle of your move; if you finish or start on a railroad you can’t ride. You could charge a fair of $200 for other players to ride. Nobody can ride if the opposite railroad is not owned by the same person.
Chance and Community Chest. Chance cards should actually have an element of chance. Some examples we thought of:
[ul]
[li]You are convicted of stock fraud. Roll one die and spend that many turns in jail.[/li][li]You are blackmailed by the player to your right. Roll a die and pay him ten times the number rolled.[/li][li]You decide to go down to the track and bet on the ponies. Place your bet in the middle of the board and roll a die. If you roll 1, 2, or 3, you lose everything. If you roll a 4 you break even. If you roll a 5, you win twice the amount you bet, 6 gets you three times the amount.[/li][li]Roll one die and go that many spaces backwards.[/li][/ul]
Community chest should have lots of cards that can be kept and played once whenever you want , (like Get Out of Jail Free) and sold/traded to other players. Examples:
[ul]
[li]Add X spaces to any dice roll (cards for various positive and negative integer values of X)[/li][li]Property values up! Sell one property back to the bank for 1.5 times its price[/li][li]Pay 1/2 rent on any non-friendly square.[/li][/ul]
Utilities. If you own a utility, each player has to pay you $10 every time they pass Go. If you own both, they each have to pay you $25. Utility properties should cost more than Boardwalk.
Free Parking should do something. We thought of turning Free Parking into a stock market, with companies that were associated with the various color groups somehow, but I forgot how we were going to make it work.
I would say the single easiest thing you can do to make Monopoly a much better game is double the price of properties. The game is completely unbalanced towards the side of indiscriminately buying property. There’s a book called “How to Win at Monopoly” that will really open your eyes about how the game is played by competition players. If you type “Monopoly variant” into google you’ll find a ton of ideas on how to make a better game so I’ll just say my piece:
I think the best way is to get creative in deal making. Problem with the game is that deals often come to a standstill because no one wants to give someone a monopoly. What I do is give the person with the third property free rides for the game or profit sharing in that property/monopoly. You would be really surprised how this lubricates the wheels of trade and makes the game much more exciting.
The ridiculousness of the existing rules (re: overly cheap property) lulls everyone into a sense of complacency like the game is supposed to play itself.
There’s a standard house rule - that’s made semi-official by mention in the rule-book of the last few Monopoly sets I’ve had - that puts all tax, utility and ‘fine’ payments go to Free Parking, and whoever lands there gets that money.
One variant that doesn’t make it a better game per se but makes it different is to play with different sorts of dice. I’ve used d10s and d20s. It changes what the average roll is, and thus the most likely to hit properties. Additionally you can cover a lot of ground in a single turn. Roll two tens and you have gone half the board and can roll again. It also makes it possible to hit the property you started on. Makes for very amusing annoyed rants at the least.
Well, if you have 4 different versions you can put the boards together and make the circuit 4 times longer. That’s a long time before you can buy your first property and it quadruples the amount of property you can buy and trade.
Oh, and rich players can accept poor players clothes in trade for rent.
BTW, you’d only get 200 when crossing the first start, not at each start.
So you’d be moving in a big clover.
And maybe after say 50% of property is bought when you get to can skip a block when you get to the center.
So if the blocks are numbered thusly.
34
21
And you started at the top left of one, went clockwise back to the top left you’d have the choice of heading to either 2 or 3. But only when 50% of the property had been bought.
Damn, this has gotten me interested. I wish I had friends nearby so we could try this out.
We’d make many more of our own Chance and Community Chest as well.
I’m a chess player, so don’t find Monopoly very stimulating.
What sort of game do you want?
Monopoly is basically a lucky game, in which the first player to get a set of properties has a large advantage.
I also find that the sort of people who like to play it (because it’s ‘fun’ as opposed to skilful) are the type who trade badly because e.g. it’s with their spouse, or because they don’t like blue properties.
If I ever play, I do things like buying 4 houses on each set of properties, because the rules say a player must have been able to buy 4 houses on each property before they can buy a hotel. If you run the game out of houses, you therefore stop the other players getting hotels (or even 4 houses). So their rents are lower than yours.
Invariably I’m then criticised for ‘spoiling the game’, which confirms my belief that Monopoly is just for family occasions, while watching TV.
One way to balance it out somewhat is to auction off properties rather than sell them outright. When a player lands on a property it goes up for auction. High bidder gets the property. The advantage is it sets prices more realistically and prevents players from thwarting potential monopolies just because of who landed where.
Monopoly is set in Atlantic City, right? What would be more authentic, and interesting, than having a “Chance” card appoint a Resident Mafia Thug for each side of the board? 10% of all revenues taken in by the remaining players would be collected by the Thug as a “tax” on doing business in a “protected” area.
Now, if the player can’t, or won’t, pony up for his owed tax, he can either forfeit a piece of property to the Thug or take his chances and roll the dice. If he rolls a 7, his playing piece is placed underneath the board in a symbolic Mafia burial (cement not being readily available) and that player is out of the game. If he rolls a 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, his tax is increased to 20% for dissing the Boss. If he rolls an 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12, however, he knocks off the existing RMT and is appointed the new RMT.
When I was growing up, my dad introduced me to a third kind of “draw a card” pile he’d learned at U.C. Berkeley. It was called Eco Crisis. (The “Eco” stood for Economic.) When you landed on Free Parking, instead of just sitting there, you had to draw an Eco Crisis card. Eco Crisis cards affected all players in the game, and included the following:
[ul][li]World War Three. Close bank for rest of game. Use only whatever money is already in circulation.[/li][li]Housing shortage. Increase rents by adding one house to all properties owned by all players.[/li][li]Foreclosure. All players’ mortgages must be paid off immediately, or the mortgaged property returned to bank.[/li][li]Nationalized transportation. All players turn all railroads in to bank.[/li][li]Communism. All players return all property to bank.[/li]Political football. No crisis, roll again.[/ul]
The main problem with this rule is that it makes the game last longer (I personally find the game incredibly dull). My friend, who loves Monopoly says that people who complain about how long the game takes tend to use that house rule, which just makes things worse.
I played with a group of friends for the past couple years before we all left for college. We played it straight from the rulebook. There were even a few instances when we emailed the manufacturers with questions about the rules (things like order of actions and whatever). We finished games in an average of two hours, sometimes sooner. We played two or three a night. It wasn’t dominated by one player.
Keys to making it an interesting game:
Play quickly. Especially at the beginning.
Memorize the costs for properties and rents. This helps with playing quickly.
PLAY BY THE RULES. This is the single most important thing, IMO. With the free parking rule, one player becomes way too rich, and this drags out the game way too much.
Play with the correct number of houses. EVERYONE isn’t supposed to be able to build hotels. THAT unbalances the game. There are 32 houses. If more than one player wants the last house (or lot of houses), you’re supposed to auction them.
No ‘immunity’ or ‘free passes.’ These aren’t in the rules.
Anyway, I know my friends and I had fun playing, and we played by the rules. We even organized a three-round Monopoly tournament at my highschool for the past two years.
I’m glad you enjoyed Monopoly.
But don’t you think it is a lucky (rather than skill-based) game?
(Surely the fact that no player dominated suggests that conclusion.)
I fully agree that you should play by the rules.
The game has been play-tested - why assume that you know better?
Interestingly enough, at one time in Monopoly’s early days, Parker Brothers actually sold a set called “Add Stock Exchange To Your Monopoly Game.” When a player landed on Free Parking (covered with a “Stock Exchange” label), they collected Stock Certificates. Dividends were payed when they landed on Free Parking again. It musn’t have caught on, though-it was discontinued in 1940.
I love Monopoly and almost never lose when playing with 2 or 3 players. With 4 or more players, it’s much harder to win, of course, but the games get more interesting, as the landscape completely changes whenever someone goes bankrupt.
I am a cutthroat competitor. I make NO trades that are not to my advantage. (I’ve seen lots of people lose making fair or more-than-fair trades, just to keep the game going. It’s not about keeping the game going, it’s about slaughtering your opponents.)
I think the property prices are about right. Especially with only 2 players, each buying everything they land on (this is practically the Prime Directive of Monopoly; you don’t pass up properties except perhaps utilities) the players will run out of money quickly. Then you have to mortgage property to buy more, which often results in a player with all kinds of rich monopolies but no cash to unmortgate or build on them. Fun.
Oh, and houses - this is why people hate me. If I have hotels, and I see someone gain a monopoly, I’ll sell all my hotels at the first opportunity, converting them to 4 houses. Less rent and you lose $$$ on the sale, but you prevent your opponent from building at all. Then, if you like, you can accept cash payments to buy a hotel, freeing up four houses. (Don’t know if this is strictly kosher.) Then if you’re lucky, two or more opponents will have to bid on the few available houses, paying far more than list price for them. Fun indeed.
The game is almost impossible to lose if you own all 4 railroads, by the way. This is the other Prime Directive.
Get the Oranges. Trade Greens for them, if necessary. It’s pretty hard to lose when you have the Oranges, what with all those people exiting Jail all the time. Greens are a disaster unless the owner is already very rich. People lust after the Greens, and then are totally unable to develop them. Fun.
Once per trip around the board, any player may, if he chooses, try to “rob the bank.” He does this by rolling the dice once. Get a 7, 8, or 9, win that many hundreds of dollars. Anything else, go to jail.
An added strategic benefit is that there are times when you may want to go to jail to avoid landing on opponent’s property. That’s why it’s limited to once per trip.