Ironically, that was the point of the game when it was created
Ps, with regards to the rules, the two main things are that:
Money does not go to whomever lands on Free Parking. The dynamics should be that players lose money round after round until only one survives (often taking over a lot of the others’ properties and amassing great wealth). Redistributing money that was removed from the game defeats this purpose.
When a player lands on a property but refuses to purchase it, it’s auctioned to the highest bidder. This speeds up the game drastically.
The last time I played it that way it still took 3 hours. The auctioning off properties thing almost never comes up because everyone usually buys every property they land on anyway.
I've played by every rule in the book and without adding any others and at one point none of us had the whole country so we were getting more money every round from going through the start than we were losing on payments
Why weren’t you building houses? You should be trading to complete a set and build.
Even without this, though, are you guys never landing on the penalty locations? I still think that you must’ve confused a rule or two, most likely the starting cash. You shouldn’t have so much money that you can buy everything up, and Go doesn’t give you enough money to survive landing on even houseless properties too many times
Same thing happened last time I played, totally by the book. After a few trips around the board we decided it wasn't going anywhere and gave the player with the most properties the win. They probably would have won eventually but it would have taken hours.
There's just not that many penalty locations and, unless you get lucky where you and someone else have the exact properties the other needs, no one is willing to trade when they know it benefits you more than them.
We were literally following every rule. From starting money to not getting extra money on parking. Of course sometimes we would land on penalty location, but it doesn't occur often enough to really penalise us. Plus no one was wiling to trade cause it would only strengthen their opponents. So it was a stale mate pretty much
Trading is the problem when I play. It's very, very obvious who gets an edge in a trade. When I play with my friends, who generally love board games, basically no one is willing to trade, and give the edge to the other player. Eventually, someone get frustrated, makes a bad trade, and throws the game just to end it.
This is usually a sign that you’re playing with too many people; the sweet spot I’ve found is 4; less than that and you can end up with kingmaker scenarios and more than that and you run into this exactly.
Generally those type of games go until someone finally manages to wing some weird 7-way trade where everyone gets what they want, then (presuming it didn’t take two hours to finally pull that off) the game ends in about 15 minutes as suddenly everyone has hotels everywhere.
Haha, I love it when you have that one guy that will never trade anything, ever. Then they set the tone and everyone is afraid to trade anything, even if it's ridiculously in their favor. Then it's either a stalemate or my girlfriend gets pissed at me because I gave one of our friends good property for peanuts to keep the game moving.
Depends on rolls and how many people you're playing with. All the properties on the board cost 5,290, which is easily affordable by 5 or 6 players. Plus auctions can make some properties much cheaper.
Usually by 40 minutes in me or someone else has managed to.manufacture a housing shortage and are in the process of choking out the rest of the players funds
The ultimate start almost nobody thinks of. You build four houses on every property you can, but never upgrade to hotels. You HAVE to have four houses to buy a hotel, so once you’ve bought up all the houses., nobody else can build anything significant and you inevitability win
Or with my group of friends, no one is willing to trade. It's really hard to made an even trade, as it's super obvious what properties are better. We just get more and more board until someone makes a bad trade just to move it along. People then yell at them for throwing the game. Then the remaining players negotiate if they should craft their own bad trade to king-make someone else. Winning seems mostly the ability to withstand boredom, unless there is an unsophisticated player to take advantage of.
of. You build four houses on every property you can, but never upgrade to hotels. You HAVE to have four houses to buy a hotel, so once you’ve bought up all the houses., nobody else can build anything significant and you inevitability win
your friends would be easy to beat. i always give someone the "obviously best properties" then clean house
Yeah, lol, all the people saying “I can’t stand monopoly” unironically are missing the point entirely of the game. To be completely honest, I didn’t know about the origins of the game at all. When I found out who made it, and why, and what it became, and why, everything made sense.
The game is designed to be random, unfair, and infuriating, short of actually randomly distributing different amounts of starting wealth to each of the players (which ended up being an interesting experiment I heard about in “The Other Side of Wall Street”)
Personally, I don’t like games like this as stuff I play on my own, but I do love the experience of it with friends, which is where I think the game backfires.
It’s like playing Trouble. Almost exactly the same principles - a random roll controls your fate - except you do get a tiny bit more strategy and decision making when it comes to specifically which piece you decide to move.
And people love random party games. You get to do something fun with people without investing too much time into thinking, something you have to do day in and day out during your job, when running errands, meeting deadlines, completing responsibilities, etc.
But, where trouble was likely designed on the assumption of making a fun party game, Monopoly was designed to be frustrating and unfun to play by someone who hated capitalism and what it led to in the markets.
If people want to know what happens with completely free market capitalism, all thy need to do is play monopoly, by the book, with 2 extra rules:
1) at the beginning of the game, every player is awarded a totally random amount of money.
2) you win, or lose, however much money you make in the game. Start with $500 and end with $1000, you’re know $500 richer. Start with $750 and end with $0? You just lost $750.
Boom, you have a great case study for how almost completely free market capitalism works, and you get a mini psychological study into how humans behave in the same environment.
Spoiler Alert
In the documentary I mentioned above, The Other Side of Wall Street, they essentially did my version of monopoly without rule 2. During each run of the game, the players that started with more were usually more aggressive and mean to the other players, even though they started the game with more money by random chance. They also played the game more aggressively and ruthlessly.
Obviously, it was still just a game, so nobody won or lost any actual money, but it was interesting to see how even the appearance of fake power changes the players’ personalities.
Yup, I totally forgot this too! Awesome to see someone else who saw the documentary.
It was really interesting to hear the story of the children who interacted with the Butler, and how they treated him like everybody else until they “grew up” in their preteens.
It really is fucked up how we can go from these little emotional love monkeys, to big judgmental pricks after being exposed to society for a relatively small amount of time.
Third rule that I refuse to play without is to limit the number of houses. Refusing to upgrade to a hotel to keep your opponents poor is a core strategy at this point
these get quoted quite often, but theres a caveat:
the official rules got changed quite a lot over the time, so all arguments are kind of true.
also, both the rules you stated were not in the original ruleset.
most importantly regarding your 2. rule, at one point the rule was without auctioning, but you couldn't start building houses unless every thingle property was sold, which made games exceptionally long.
I remember going around to a friend's house when I was a kid and they played that weird free parking rule where you get the money in the centre, for the first time in my life!
Everybody always mentions these rules but forgets the biggest game changer rule: houses can run out, at which point nobody can buy more houses. You also need to be able to buy 4 houses (there must be 4 available at the bank) before you buy a hotel, you can't just straight buy a hotel by cashing 4xhouse+1hotel cost.
Therefore the easiest way to win is just buy 4 houses on all your properties and never upgrade. Cut the supply of houses for everyone else while your properties have most of them = usually quick win.
The worst/best part of auctioning is that you can bid on your own auction, meaning you can buy properties much cheaper if no one has the money to outbid a bid cheaper than the original price.
The other important rule is that there are a limited number of houses.
The ideal strategy is to max out your houses but never upgrade to hotels. The rules specifically state that players can only buy houses as long as there are still some left in the box, whoever did the first person to buy houses can usually lock-up the game early.
There are a limited number of houses in the box. You can stack 4 houses on all your properties and exhaust the supply of houses, preventing your opponents from developing their property. You cannot go to hotels directly, you must have been able to place 4 houses first.
I know it's not the correct way to play, but every time I've played Monopoly, if we landed on an unoccupied space on the board, we either bought it or just passed the turn. No auctioning. This was only with 2 people playing though.
I love monopoly but you need time to play it. I don’t like the express games personally. And yes it is better with alcohol but we have a strict no alcohol rule on game night so yeah...
I get bored right around the time I can purchase a house. I love boardgames but Monopoly has far too much counting, I can barely keep my actual bank account in the green, much less a fake one.
Haha yeah then monopoly isn’t for you. Have you ever played colonist of catan? That’s a literal translation from dutch so i’m not sure if it’s the right name.
In American English it's "Settlers of Catan". In British English it's "Saviors of Catan". In Australian English it's "Criminal Exiles of Catan".
Sweet colonialism zing, bro. Aww, thanks fam.
Edit: Mayfair Games, distributor for the "Catan" game have understandably forgotten to market their product for Canadian audiences, an oversight that Canada has issued numerous strongly worded apologies for.
There are many versions of Ticket to Ride, but if I could suggest the best one it would be the Europe version. The basic game (USA) is good, but Europe added some improvements without changing too much in the core of the game.
If you like it but want to play it more quickly, Monopoly Deal provides a lot of the nostalgia and fun in a short playtime and without the negatives. Also, if you enjoy Monopoly, you may enjoy Machi Koro, Power Grid, Acquire, or High Society. All great games. Acquire and Power Grid are on the heavier side (more complex rules and longer playtime) while Machi Koro and High Society are rather light and quick.
You should check out monopoly deal, it's got the same basic idea, become the best capitalist, but it's like 15 minutes long, definitely a game for shots and bongs
I think it depends on how you play. When i play, its extremely social. We cut deals, give immunity, any offer is acceptable if agreed upon. It makes the game more about social manuvering and bartering, with the board game just a facilitator for it. Very few games really capture that element, though I hear Chinatown does it a bit better.
That's because everybody skips the official rule that almost but not quite forces properties to be bought whenever a player lands on them. Whenever you land on a property and don't buy it, it gets auctioned. Each player is allowed to bid any amount, and you go through players clockwise. The property remains unbought only if nobody bids anything initially. So typically all the unwanted spots get bought for next to nothing by someone, and getting the properties you want costs extra money instead of time, making the game rely even more on initial luck.
Also you can start buying on the very first lap instead of taking a whole "free" lap first.
They also insist on that bizarre house rule of putting all the taxes on free parking. The point of the taxes and fines are to help pull money out of circulation.
The rules just say "auction" they don't detail how the auction is supposed to go like you did. This leads to fights whenever we invoke the auction rule, stating that the other people are doing it wrong.
I've heard people claim the "free" lap helps level the playing field or something but it does just the opposite. Everyone starts at the same spot so everyone has the same chance of landing on good properties. If one person pulls way ahead in the "free" lap they now have an unfair advantage.
My brothers and I play once a month after playing (with each other) competitively throughout childhood. I say once a month, but we play for 2 hrs and easily go through 5-6 games every time. If say 20 minutes a game if you're playing quick and know the game. That being said, I can no longer enjoy it with friends and my wife's family because I hardly lose and they don't like that.
True, but the rules don’t account for the amount of intra-family conflict and arguing involved. Stuff you thought was long forgotten and in the past can get pulled out during a fight over an obviously corrupt trade of Park Place for Baltic Ave.
I always try to argue other players out of trades and it eats up tons of time. My brother is good at convincing people a trade that's bad for them is actually good for them, when in reality it's good for him... so my main goal in games I play with him in just trying to stymie any efforts he makes at trading. Eats up hours.
True, but the rules don’t account for the amount of intra-family conflict and arguing involved. Stuff you thought was long forgotten and in the past can get pulled out during a fight over an obviously corrupt trade of Park Place for Baltic Ave.
If you have access to a fully stocked cutlery drawer, even the version with free parking payout and no-buy-no-auction rarely lasts longer than 90 minutes, non-withstanding police and EMT response times in your area.
The biggest rule that everyone ignores which makes the game take forever is that if you land on an unclaimed property you have first right to buy it and if you refuse to someone else can immediately purchase that space.
Because as soon as that person refuses, it's up for auction around the table in which all the players are given the opportunity to bid and purchase that property. Right then. As in "immediately".
Main difference between the way people usually play and what the rules say is every time someone lands on a property that no one owns yet they have the option of buying it at full price, and then if they either don’t want to or can’t afford it then the property goes up for auction amongst all players.
Way faster this way, and less random chance involved.
You obviously want to buy every field you place on in your first few rounds, as many as possible. But you shouldn't be able to buy everything in your first round.
There is also the house shortage rule. If all houses tokens are in play, nobody can buy any houses until someone destroy some or upgrade. So savy players just stay at 4 houses and win that way
Typically the rules people don't follow are house/ hotel limits and letting other players purchase a property if the first player elects not to purchase it after landing on it.
Because the house rules people play with end up propping up the losers for longer. The purpose of monopoly was to show why a completely capitalist society can quickly fall because dumb luck and no safety nets allow a lucky person in the early parts of the game to win nearly straight away. They did a test where basically give the starting person extra money and see who wins. Always the guy with extra money.
It's a great example of how a small amount of benefit can quickly cascade to drastically different circumstances. The house rules are actually more socialist ideas of welfare etc
What? I play the official rules and games often last around 9 hours; the version of monopoly is the collectors from years ago so the rules may have changed
You must be doing something wrong. Are you SURE you don't accidentally use any house rules? People are often blown away when I tell them free parking doesn't give you money.
The one I know is, you can set any time frame you want and it comes with a scoring sheet to add up your total assets so you can see who's winning at the end.
It lasts like 15 mins for my family. I buy the full set of reds or yellows or God forbid Mayfair and my brother throws a tantrum and leaves. He convinces everyone else to leave and I am left alone. I rarely lose when I play. Because I go for the colours that are likely to be landed on after jail.
This is blatantly false, I have no idea what universe you are living in, but my friends and I play a bunch and it’s never taken less than 3 hours and we are sticklers for the rules. No one passes up properties unless they can’t afford it and we then auction it, taxes go back into the bank, not a pile, and we abuse the house rule. I’m not even sure how it is physically possible to finish a game in an hour.
Playing it by the book has one horrible flaw - when the houses run out they stay out and no one else can build. That means the best strategy is to buy all the houses as soon as possible and never upgrade to a hotel - ensuring no other player can ever upgrade anything.
I’ve got the GoT version of monopoly and I love how the game is set up because of the limited amount of funds you get and the price of properties, it makes for a nice and quick game no matter how many players
The game drags on forever if played with good strategy, correct rules or not. The "free parking" thing and "auction rules" or any other official rule that gets ignored or house ruled don't matter to this, and I don't understand why people say that - I guess they play with bad strategy.
The thing is, it's almost always best strategy to buy every property you land on (why wouldn't you? Property is a safe space and generates money), you have enough starting money to do this the whole game until all property is gone in most cases, and if you're playing with 3+ players that means frequently no one gets a Monopoly.
Then what happens? The "Pass Go" money is enough to go all the way around the board every time. No one goes bankrupt. The game lasts forever.
Also, if more than one person wants houses at the same time, and there are not enough to fill demand, they are auctioned to the highest bidder, potentially MASSIVELY inflating housing costs.
Seriously, I don't think I've ever played a game of Monopoly that didn't end with someone pulling a Mac and flipping the table, or storming off in anger.
Its designed to teach how capitalism is bad. Its designed to be no fun.
Play by strict official rules, but up property and ONLY put houses down. Never upgrade to hotels. Rules say players can only buy houses that are available and if you've used them all up, you can effectively block the rest of the players from developing.
House rule or actually in the rulebook? My rulebook doesn't say that. If it's in certain versions, maybe that's why people are arguing so much about the rules here.
Oh no. No no no no no no. I am 100% ride or die on those official rules. Do you want a quick game? Follow the rules. Do you want to win? FOLLOW TH RULES
Monopoly Deal is a better game. Everyone should just play that instead. It plays in 15 minutes, has all of the nostalgia of the original: property names, hotels, spaces and community chest cards translated to cards in Deal. But almost none of the bullshit from the original, like roll-to-move, snowballing, player elimination, etc. It doesn't even have auctions, so players who never played by the rules won't get confused.
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u/Swantape Sep 11 '19
Who plays monopoly with the official rules anyway