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Originally Posted by QuikSand
I have been playing a bit of Monopoly lately... I picked up a trial version of the game for the Palm OS, and have been fiddling with it a bit when I have a little time to kill. By the way, I don't have agreat sense of how skillful the computer opponents are, but this is a very faithful rendition -- very, very well done.
Anyway -- playing a few games lately has gotten me to thinking: Monopoly is actually an underrated game, I think. And playing a few times has persuaded me, more than ever, to believe that serious harm has been done to this game by the series of "house rules" that people everywhere have used in playing the game.
Specifically, I believe the biggest problem is with the "Free Parking" spot. It seems that many -- even most -- families have adopted some rule that a player landing on Free Parking is entitled to some reward. The rules, of course, say it's just a free spot - nothing hapens. With my current group of board gaming friends, we usually have played that FP accumulates all the incidental payments made in the game -- the various taxes, payments from Chance and Community Chest cards, etc. The player who lands on FP gets all that cash - which can be substantial sometimes. My family, and many others, had the habit of "seeding" the FP spot with a $500 bill, making it all the more attractive. I understand that these habits are very widespread -- probably more people play with some "bonus" for FP than those who play by the actual rules.
No. No. No.
I believe more firmly than ever that this really undermines the game. Making money in the game too plentiful is a problem -- it makes the decision-making elements of the game close to pointless. Land on a property, buy it without thinking. Of course you do, why not? All you tie up is half its purchase price... there's hardly ever a time when it doesn't make sense to buy an available property. And thus, the game becomes largely a contest to see who gets lucky in the first few times around the board, and manages to land on the best set of properties for purchase. It devolves into a game of luck.
Now - take that familiar scene, and remove the house rules. All those $150 tax payments and "you pay $50" Chance cards result in money leaving the game and going to the bank. There's no recycling back in by FP, it's just gone. Suddenly, money is a far more scarce commodity in the game, and it takes on a new element altogether. There are plenty of times when it might not make sense to buy the property you landed on -- you run a much greater risk of putting yourself too short to buy something else more valuable later, or to pay a cost that might befall you in time.
Plus -- this introduces a fairly little-known rule form the original game. If the player landing on an available property doesn't buy it, it goes up for auction. Most homes, I think, just leave the property unpurchased for the next player who lands on it. Auctions, though, are both interesting and very efficient at requiring precise decision-making. Is Marvin Gardens worth $300 to you? What about $350? $450? What if you already have one yellow property? What if your opponent already has the other two yellows? The presence of the auction (both by using that rule, and by keeping the money system confined so some properties actually go to auction) makes this a completely different game -- much more strategic, much less pure dumb luck.
I have heard of people playing an alternate version of Monoply, where the purchase price of every property is double what is listed -- meaning that many more properties actually go to auction. I'd be interested in playign this way, too, but honestly -- with the original rules followed faithfully, this might not even be necessary.
In any event... you probbaly have a dusty old box of Monopoly sitting around the house somewhere. Pull it out some day, and fire that bad boy up. Or get a version on the computer, if that makes you feel more self-respecting. Ths is a game that gets short shrift... in part because we have emasculated it with stupid house rules and more friendly-seeming additions.
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