
Fixing Monopoly - tmsbrg
http://www.ludible.nl/how-i-fixed-monopoly/
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hprotagonist
I prefer this approach: [http://imgur.com/a/vX3zm](http://imgur.com/a/vX3zm)

> Because of the way the game is designed, this inevitably results in one
> person acquiring a majority of the assets on the board, and beginning the
> slow, painful, friendship-destroying process of grinding the other players
> out of the game, turn by turn. This is why Monopoly starts as a fun exciting
> romp, only to turn into a bitter cesspool of despair.

~~~
pmiller2
I agree. Monopoly isn't broken; it's a shitty game _by design_.

~~~
cercatrova
Yeah exactly, the game shows that monopolies naturally emerge from player
actions, just as in real life. That was the entire point of the game being
created.

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SamBam
The site is hugged to death, so I'll just be that person who makes assumptions
based on the headline, and writes comments without reading.

Assuming we're talking about the game, my favorite fixes are anything that
increase player autonomy, interaction, and decision-making, and decreases
randomness.

My favorite variations are probably old-hat to many players, but they include
allowing completely unregulated deals between players (e.g. loans, swaps,
etc.) and allowing all players to bid on every single unowned property that a
player lands on (sometimes with some kind of addition such as the landing
player getting the right of first refusal at twice the price, or something,
but never simply letting them purchase at face-value).

The second rule -- putting all landed-on properties on the open market --
really allow people to try out different strategies, whether it's trying to
buy everything at the start, no matter the cost, or trying to be more cautious
with money.

~~~
stormbrew
> allowing all players to bid on every single unowned property that a player
> lands on (sometimes with some kind of addition such as the landing player
> getting the right of first refusal at twice the price, or something, but
> never simply letting them purchase at face-value).

AFAIK this isn't a variant, this is more or less the actual real rule of the
game (or something halfway between). If a player refuses to buy something when
they land on it, it's supposed to go up for auction with no minimum bid.

No one plays that way, but it's the official rule.

[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Monopoly/Official_Rules](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Monopoly/Official_Rules)

~~~
nickjarboe
Of course people play that way. It's the rules. :)

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ergothus
I'm not sure if you're joking (smiley lacked a clear target), but just in case
you're not: Monopoly is somewhat famously almost never played by the actual
as-written rules. Indeed, most people know the rules they learned as children
and are shocked to discover they aren't playing by "the rules".

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ende
I could only get a cached text version of the link to load, but I'm surprised
to see not a single mention of The Landlord's Game. It was the precursor to
Monopoly developed by Elizabeth Magie, and intentionally designed to be an
unfair and unbalanced game in order to demonstrate certain economic
principals.

    
    
      The earliest known version of Monopoly, known as The
      Landlord's Game, was designed by an American, Elizabeth
      Magie, and first patented in 1904 but existed as early
      as 1902. Magie, a follower of Henry George, originally 
      intended The Landlord's Game to illustrate the economic 
      consequences of Ricardo's Law of Economic rent and the 
      Georgist concepts of economic privilege and land value 
      taxation.
    
      The game was created to be a "practical demonstration 
      of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual 
      outcomes and consequences". She based the game on the 
      economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry 
      George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich 
      property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some 
      people could find it hard to understand why this happened and 
      what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist 
      ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might 
      be easier to demonstrate. Magie also hoped that when played 
      by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of 
      unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into 
      adulthood.
    
      * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_board_game_Monopoly
      * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game
    

_(edits: typos and formatting)_

~~~
mjevans
The problem is, very few actually play the game by the correct rules. That's
what the imgur link in a different part of this discussion is trying to teach.
The 'proper rules' that make Monopoly the unfair game it is intended to be.

~~~
ende
I'm trying to dig up Magie's alternative rules, which were modeled after
preferred Georgist policies. I never tried them myself, but I hear they made
for a very long, overly balanced game with highly equitable outcomes. Too
boring for a game, but much nicer for real life ;)

I have a link to them somewhere. I'll post it if I can find it.

~~~
pessimizer
This version has three phases:
[http://socialcredit.schooljotter2.com/resources/social-
art/m...](http://socialcredit.schooljotter2.com/resources/social-art/monopoly)

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LaikaF
Our house monoply varient involves a third die. The third die has n+2 sides
where n is the number of players. If a one is rolled, everyone takes a bong
hit. If the highest number is rolled everyone takes a sip of water. The rest
of the numbers are handed out to each person. When the die comes up on their
number it's their turn. This isn't as much of an advantage as you'd think it'd
be. It's easy to run out of money early, and not go forever later.

Also: -Auctions -No free parking -Immunity trading -Three die rolls = jail
-Doubles = same player goes again as their turn isn't over

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justinpombrio
Alternatively, you could play a well-designed game. There's no shortage.

[https://www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame](https://www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame)

~~~
rb808
> Pandemic Legacy is a co-operative campaign game, with an overarching story-
> arc played through 12-24 sessions, depending on how well your group does at
> the game.

eish - is there a list for something that can be played for kids with short
attention spans?

~~~
ashark
_How_ short, and how old are the kids?

Very young kids: Animal Upon Animal

Older kids, really short attention span: Love Letter

Older kids, somewhat less short attention span: Carcassonne, Sushi Go Party
(which is a gateway drug to the similarly-played, confusing-sounding-rules-
but-actually-easy-in-practice Seven Wonders)

[EDIT] if others list suggestions there's a high likelihood that King of Tokyo
will be on the list, but I want to preemptively counter that by noting it's a
well-regarded, kid-friendly-themed, simple game that I've _entirely_ failed to
find any fun in, and can't even fathom how others find fun in it, though I
believe them when they claim that they have—I just don't understand. [EDIT
EDIT] Point is, watch a Youtube play of it before committing. Actually,
probably do that for any of these.

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Pharylon
A friend of mine once made a "Dungeons and Dragons Monopoly" variant where
each character was a D&D class and the spaces were re-named as iconic D&D
locations. If a character landed on the same space as another, they'd then get
to "fight" (roll two dice and compare numbers) and the winner could steal a
property from the other. It turned out to be one of the more fun Monopoly
variants I've ever played, as it allowed monopolies to be created easier
(fighting to get that third property someone wouldn't trade you) and thus the
game progressing faster.

~~~
andrewclunn
So you made Talisman?

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ents
Mirror:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.ludible.nl/how-
i-fixed-monopoly/)

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takingflac
Just add the hostile take over expansion called Risk.

[http://www.gilwood.org/riskopoly.htm](http://www.gilwood.org/riskopoly.htm)

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contingencies
In 2010 I met a guy who claimed to be the US Monopoly champion at a boardgame
meetup in LA. I asked him how there could be a serious championship since the
game's rules are so simple and professional players would simply play the
statistics. He said the whole game is about convincing people to give you what
you want, he was very good at it, and it turned out that his regular
profession was lawyer.

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gingerbread-man
Am I the only one for whom the link isn't working? I'm getting a 404 error.

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interfixus
[http://existentialcomics.com/comic/159](http://existentialcomics.com/comic/159)

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ouid
hugged to death?

~~~
tlarkworthy
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.ludible.nl/how-
i-fixed-monopoly/)

~~~
gshulegaard
Lol...the cache appears to be loading a plugin that loads content from a
remote source...so cache isn't helping me here.

On a side note, am I reading this correctly in that it is using a <javascript>
tag to run PHP?

view-
source:[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.ludible.nl/how-
i-fixed-monopoly/)

| <script type="text/javascript">

| window.abb = {};

| php = {};

| window.PHP = {};

| PHP.ajax = "[http://www.ludible.nl/wp-
admin/admin-](http://www.ludible.nl/wp-admin/admin-) ajax.php";PHP.wp_p_id =
"1034";

| ...

~~~
path411
It's just a javascript variable named PHP.

~~~
gshulegaard
It would appear so. Still amusing.

