RussR
Final Approach
My daughter (19) likes the game Monopoly. She has fond memories of playing it with my parents. But I hate it - mostly because it goes on forever, round and round the board, paying little $6 rents that don't matter because everybody has a ton of money. So it's been years and years since I've played.
Well I read somewhere that's it's likely I hate it because I didn't grow up playing with the actual rules.
Tonight my daughter wanted to play, and I agreed, but only if we played by the actual rules. And it was so much better.
We only had to do two things differently from how I grew up playing it, in order to comply with the actual rules:
1. No, taxes and doctor fees and all that other stuff do not go into Free Parking to be won by whoever lands there. Doing this makes everybody super rich and therefore the game super long.
2. If someone lands on a spot and doesn't want it, it gets auctioned off to the highest bidder. This affected the game more than I thought. For one, most of the properties were now owned after only a few times around the board. And you knew if you didn't want it, you may or may not be able to get it cheaper depending on what the other person needed - or even how much money they had to buy it with. Totally different strategy. I had never played with the auction before (although it's in the rulebook), but it made a huge difference.
I want to say we finished the game in maybe 45 minutes. That's reasonable. I remember games that went for way over an hour, then you'd pause for dinner, then maybe continue until everyone just got sick of it, or started doing ridiculous deals with each other.
I also read somewhere that many people have pretty much the same experience as me, that Monopoly is one of those nostalgic games that everybody thinks fondly of, but also hates and never really wants to play. But after tonight, I will definitely play again, as long as it's by the real rules.
(Oh yeah, I did stomp her as she landed on my Boardwalk with 3 houses. Rent $1100 and she had about $70 to her name. Crushed!)
Well I read somewhere that's it's likely I hate it because I didn't grow up playing with the actual rules.
Tonight my daughter wanted to play, and I agreed, but only if we played by the actual rules. And it was so much better.
We only had to do two things differently from how I grew up playing it, in order to comply with the actual rules:
1. No, taxes and doctor fees and all that other stuff do not go into Free Parking to be won by whoever lands there. Doing this makes everybody super rich and therefore the game super long.
2. If someone lands on a spot and doesn't want it, it gets auctioned off to the highest bidder. This affected the game more than I thought. For one, most of the properties were now owned after only a few times around the board. And you knew if you didn't want it, you may or may not be able to get it cheaper depending on what the other person needed - or even how much money they had to buy it with. Totally different strategy. I had never played with the auction before (although it's in the rulebook), but it made a huge difference.
I want to say we finished the game in maybe 45 minutes. That's reasonable. I remember games that went for way over an hour, then you'd pause for dinner, then maybe continue until everyone just got sick of it, or started doing ridiculous deals with each other.
I also read somewhere that many people have pretty much the same experience as me, that Monopoly is one of those nostalgic games that everybody thinks fondly of, but also hates and never really wants to play. But after tonight, I will definitely play again, as long as it's by the real rules.
(Oh yeah, I did stomp her as she landed on my Boardwalk with 3 houses. Rent $1100 and she had about $70 to her name. Crushed!)
. The gist is that every time someone buys a property or makes an improvement (house/hotel) I would add it into my app (attributed to player). Then on any given throw of the dice you could choose to "buy" an insurance policy from me, and I would HAVE to offer it to you at some fixed premium % value (which I pick upfront and do not reveal the profit margin). If you land on any property, I have to pay the rent. Inevitably what happened is I sold a lot of insurance, and when people rolled the dice and DIDN'T have to cash in on their claim they felt cheated for paying insurance premiums. Had a lot of parallels with how a lot of people feel about insurance! It was a little bit of manual labor during the property acquisition/buildout period of the game, but then it pretty easy. And I just checked and I still have that Excel application!
