[wolfgke]

> Board games are so so so good these days, just avoid Monopoly. ;)

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monopoly_(game)&o... Monopoly was intended as a way to demonstrate that an economy which rewards wealth creation is better than one in which monopolists work under few constraints.

In other words and put much more harshly: Monopoly is played the right way if after a short time one player is happily winning and all the other ones are really angry.

[TeMPOraL]

This really should have been written on the box explicitly.

I didn't see the connection until someone pointed it out to me when I was already an adult. All I have from this game is memories of boredom playing it with family as a kid.

[hypersoar]

It did say that explicitly. The original version of the game was "The Landlord's Game"[1], and it came with two sets of rules: monopolist, as you know the game and anti-monopolist, with a land-value tax. You were meant to play the game with the former rules, and then again with the latter to see how much nicer it was. It turns out that being a monopolist is more fun, so, over time, the game was shortened to just that part and gained popularity through a bunch of rethemes. Parker Bros. bought one of those rethemes, though not from Elizabeth Magie, the creator, but from some other guy who claimed to have made it.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game

[the_af]

> It turns out that being a monopolist is more fun

...for the monopolist. Everybody else is bored to tears. This makes it a terrible game in its more well-known form.

[hypersoar]

I'm not saying I'm a fan of the game. But, in its defense, I've never played the nice version. There are probably few living people who have. Perhaps it's even more boring?

[jjnoakes]

If you were bored playing Monopoly, you were probably not playing with the real rules (i.e. you had no auctions, you used free parking, etc).

Played correctly, Monopoly isn't a terribly long game, and (usually) once someone gets ahead, it is a fairly quick steamroll.

[pessimizer]

> the real rules

The Parker Brothers rules, rather. The game was a folk game before its acquisition by Parker Brothers, and their rules are a slightly simplified version of the Quaker variant learned by the man responsible for the graphic design of the published version of the game. House rules trace their lineages to versions of the game before Parker Brothers published it, and are equally valid. Although money on Free Parking introduces a ton of randomness, lengthens the game significantly, and is bad, it is no less real.

[svachalek]

This. I played as a kid with all the traditional house rules, which really drag it out. As an adult I've tried it straight up with box rules and wow -- it's quick and brutal. Still not very fun but it does make a point.

[PhineasRex]

This comes up every time somebody complains about Monopoly but even with auctions the game is still far too long and ends well after the winner is apparent.

[wolfgke]

Then the players are probably much too nice.

[SilasX]

Okay, but to really make that point, you need:

a) mechanisms to make the game proceed faster, and

b) to play the "follow-up" second ruleset, where (AIUI) you use something like Georgist rules (the land value tax) where players are supposed to realize, hey, you can't monopolize under the LVT because monopoly rents just get taxed away.

[Agustus]

As a heads up, speed is increased significantly by following the official auction rule: When you land on a property, you have the option to purchase it outright; or if you do not purchase, the bank will then conduct an auction of the property.

[SilasX]

That's what I've heard, but it only solves the "getting all property bought up" problem. The other bottleneck is "getting some player to trade away the last of a color", which seems to be unchanged, right?

[Splines]

Monopoly really shines in electronic versions, where book-keeping and rule enforcement is easy to do. There's no "free parking money pot" nonsense that just makes the game unnecessarily long.

[fiatjaf]

It really shines in hell.