IJCM: the popularity of Monopoly the board game

glennmagusharvey

It just becomes a boring slog after everyone buys up all the properties.  People slowly run out of money, at the whims of the dice to some extent.  Even an entirely linear board game is more interesting, and even Risk has a more interesting endgame.

To be fair, the buying up properties phase is pretty fun.  Also it's very conveniently easy to reskin the game and change it to whatever theme one desires.  So it can serve as a nice collectible.

Edit: inb4 someone posts this:

Stormtroper

I've never tried them, but from what I've heard there are a bunch of house rules you can use to turn the game into something much faster, active and fun.

Tatterhood

Stormtroper wrote: »

I've never tried them, but from what I've heard there are a bunch of house rules you can use to turn the game into something much faster, active and fun.

Most people use house rules to do the exact opposite, though. For instance the actual rules say that if someone lands on a property and doesn't buy it, the property gets auctioned off to the highest bidder immediately. Almost nobody does this, which slows down the game. The "money under Free Parking" rule that apparently a lot of people use can also make the game much longer.

There was an interesting video I saw somewhere talking about how a lot of the changes that were made to the official rules since the earliest version also have similar slowing-down effects. As originally designed, once someone got an insurmountable lead the game would end relatively quickly. A lot of rule changes (official and unofficial) are intended to make it easier to come back from behind, which sounds like a good thing but ends up making it take forever for anyone to actually get eliminated (and hence for the game to end).

FWIW, I used to play a lot of Monopoly with family to pass the time on rainy days. It does the job for that.

Blueeyedrat

My family has, like, eight Monopoly boards (well, six plus two not-quite-Monopoly knock-offs). Haven't played in quite a while, though. My brother-in-law and I once tried to set up a game using all eight boards, and I used that idea to think up a ruleset for a four-board game:

• One large Free Parking space in the center. Follow each board as normal, passing straight through the center to the next board. If you land on Free Parking, you can choose which path to take on your next turn.
• Owning three properties of the same color (or two, in those cases) lets you build houses/hotels as if you had a monopoly, even if they're on separate boards.
• (...Come to think of it, I never set up rules for railroads/utilities.)
  
• Game ends when all of the properties are bought (highest value player wins), or if someone obtains a monopoly in the same board/color (that player wins).
  

Bee

At least you guys didn't play the version where a demonic cash register eats your money and your opponents spam you with trade offers while automatically turning down any you give them.