I feel like a lot of the major problems from the game, like the house rules or people not wanting to make trades, stems from the fact people not wanting to lose in Monopoly. A loss in Monopoly is a hard loss.
Whenever anyone suggests playing Monopoly I always insist on following the rules as written. (Auctions, no money on Free Parking, building evenly across properties, when there’s no more houses left in the bank no one can build houses, etc.) The game goes a little faster that way… because everyone eventually agrees to quit and play something else.
When I was a kid the family rule was that the game is only over once there’s a “real” winner, meaning all the others gone bankrupt. Always great for the first loser and easy 3-4 hour games. I just liked playing the bank and sorting bills.
If you play by the rules the game isn’t that long, either whoever owns orange or who gets lucky at the beginning just wins the game.
I will forever shout it from the rooftops. Monopoly is a 30 minute game, regardless of how many players you have. If you play by the actual rules, and none of the house rules you’ve made up for yourself, it’s really quick and really fun. No families need to be shattered over the game. No friendships lost. Just play by the actual rules!
Monopoly has one great rule (or lack of specificity), that it doesn’t put any restricting on when you are able to trade (doesn’t even say it has to be your turn!). This creates a great ten minutes or so when most of the properties are bought and people are making interesting deals with each other.
Everything else in the game is bad because there are very few interesting decisions to make. The dice tell you where you go and the space you land on tells you what to do. Strictly you “decide” whether or not to buy an available property if you land on it, but it’s virtually always a good idea. In the rare auction case you can decide your bid. You can decide which order you mortgage off your properties if you are out of money. I think one of the chance/CC cards has a choice on it? Even buying houses is kind of dull since you have to build them evenly across the block.
It’s a critique of capitalism, there not being many choices and alway accruing capital that’s limited in supply is the exact point of the game.
100% true. Note that I was responding to someone who called it quick and fun, so the lack of choices seemed like a relevant point there.
Have you tried to play literally any other board game?
This is it! Everyone I’ve ever met that hates monopoly doesn’t play by the rules. They don’t auction, they put all the money under free parking, and I’ve even had some people that increase the $100 when you pass go once all of the properties are bought. Of course you hate the game, you’ve been playing it wrong.
I’d love to know where the free parking thing cane from. I distinctly remember not doing that as a kid but then suddenly I don’t know why in my teens(I think) it appeared in a way like it was not doing it was incorrect.
Never heard of the pass go thing though.
The Pass Go thing came from a friend of the family that came over for Christmas dinner one year. It went from $100 to $300 once all the properties were bought, and the reason was “so everyone can afford to land on hotel spaces.” So, yeah, completely defeating the point of late stage of the game.
Monopoly: Communism Edition
Sounds more like Monopoly: Social Democracy edition to me. Though either way, you’d need to add a tax for the rich to explain the $300.
Monopoly started out to show that capitalism is based on luck and opportunity, and that the end result is one person owning everything.
The whole process is miserable and even when you win you have to sit thru a prolonged ending where you slowly drain every last resource from you friends and family.
It’s not a bad game, they just overestimated how well Americans can pick up irony.
Originally called “The Landlord’s Game” Parker Brothers changed it to something less obviously terrible in the run up to the great depression.
I don’t know if Far Side is really that deep but:
The only way to win is to not play
Is literally the point the game tries to beat over family’s heads for hours at a time.
Originally called “The Landlord’s Game” Parker Brothers changed it to something less obviously terrible in the run up to the great depression.
Goes to show you how indoctrinated and manipulated we all are when we think that the idea of a monopoly is more acceptable than a landlord.
In an ironic twist of complete capitalist predictability, the game we know today was also stolen from the original developer.
Far Side? Here I thought that was from War Games.
I actually enjoy monopoly. Its not anywhere close to my absolute favorite board game of those Ive played, mostly because I feel like it relies too much on rng and that this makes the strategy less useful, but its at least in like, the top 10 or so
So what’s in your top 5?
Why? There’s literally thousands of better games. Just pick any from the top thousand on BGG.
I do too, even though I’m 1000% aware of the original message behind it. It’s like a toxic relationship.
They should “update” the game rules to mimic the real life experience. 1 or 2 players begins the game either with 25% of the amount of money that the game brings (or with 1 set of average cost properties with either houses or hotels) and the rest of the players begin the game following the original rules.
They should call it Bezopoly or something like that.
Dude is gonna love Cho Chabudai Gaeshi.
