| > Monopoly feels like the game might take 4 hours For what it's worth, if you play Monopoly by the actual rules, and you don't act stupidly stingy on your trade offers, a 4-player game of Monopoly shouldn't take more than 30-45 minutes. The problem is, people of course don't like losing, and everybody loves a comeback story. So people play with house rules that constantly inject extra money into the game, which prolongs the game's purpose: For all the wealth to consolidate to a single player. House rules in Monopoly are so common that a lot of people don't even realize they're playing house rules! Do you give money for landing on Free Parking? You're playing a house rule. Do you give $400 instead of $200 for LANDING on Go? You're playing a house rule. Do you allow purchasing Hotels when there aren't enough houses? Do you allow building to not be even? Do you use some sort of object to act like a hotel because the game only comes with 12 hotels in the box? You're playing house rules. The fact there are only 12 hotels and 32 houses was a deliberate design choice to force players to trade and allow one player to horde all the houses and hotels. You can't mortgage properties that have buildings on them. You must sell the buildings first, and you only get half of what you paid for them from the bank. When you unmortage, you have to pay an extra 10% fee. You don't collect rent on mortgaged properties. If you play any differently, you're playing a house rule. Rolling doubles 3 times sends you to jail. That's actually NOT a house rule! Speaking of jail, you DO still collect rent while in it! This means that deliberately staying in jail can actually be a strategic move if another player is possibly about to land on your dark Green properties (Baltic, North Carolina, Pennsylvania) while your opponent owns the Oranges, which you're likely to land on immediately after leaving jail. Don't get me wrong, Monopoly is a shitty game for many reasons, but "Games take 2+ hours" is not one of them unless you're playing it wrong. |