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a not very exhaustive track with variants for "Germanizing" Monopoly for your gaming protection |
last update: January 30, 2005 | |||
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For a game that's sold 200 million copies worldwide, Monopoly is the Rodney Dangerfield of boardgaming... it doesn't get any respect. In the ever-humble opinion of the Conductor, that's a crying shame. Monopoly played BY THE RULES with four players is a fast-paced, sneaky game of real estate speculation and bankruptcy. Unfortunately, most people's exposure to Monopoly is with a plethora of house rules... the most common being:
All three of these house rules add cash to the game, which extends it's length and rewards weak play. Not a good idea if you want to enjoy Monopoly at it's best. There are three commonly missed rules as well... rules that I was not taught as a child playing Monopoly (and most other folks have missed 'em, too!) The following quotes are from the official Monopoly rules.
So, chances are you've never played Monopoly as it was meant to be played... so, what are you doing reading this page?!? DROP EVERYTHING and get a game started. Now, come on... move, move, move! You don't want to be the player who picks pieces last and gets stuck with the iron, do you?! You're still here? Well, for those of you left behind in the mad rush to for a table, here's some variant rules (mostly untested) for making Monopoly more "Germanic" - in other words, more like all the other games I play. :-) Fixing the Start Granted, with more than four players, the start of the game can be a royal mess. Sure, the first guy out of the blocks does pretty well, or the guy who rolls doubles, but what about the fifth or sixth guys, who are statistically more and more likely to spend their first couple of turns landing on owned properties and paying rent rather than acquiring real estate? Here's some possible fixes to that problem. Auction the Start Order Bid for the right to go first. R. Wayne Schmittberger in his book, New Rules for Classic Games Wayne suggests bidding in $5 increments, first auctioning off the first place position, followed by the remaining positions (2nd, 3rd, etc). If players do not wish to bid, order is resolved by dice rolls. Players also rearrange themselves around the table in start player order. "Ursuppe" the Problem Away In the first two rounds of turns, when you land on another token, you move forward to the next open space. Staggered Start The first player starts on go, the second on Just Visiting, the third on Free Parking, the fourth on Go To Jail, the fifth on Go, and so on... Running Start Just like auto races... don't allow any player to buy property during his or her first trip around the board. (This rule variation tends to balance out the disadvantage experienced by those moving last in a game involving five or more people.)<P> "Fast Food Franchise" Got It Right In his excellent homage to Monopoly, Tom Lehmann uses a different method to avoid the start problems. In the original game rules, if your first roll landed you on another player, you returned to Go and rolled again until you landed on a space by yourself. In a variant posted on his website, Tom suggested that when you roll again (after landing on another player), you should begin counting from the space you landed in. Auction Monopoly Due to the popularity of auction games in the German market, it's not surprising that folks try to come up with workable auction variants for Monopoly. Modern Art Meets Monopoly When you land on a space you can either:
Also, players start with half the stated amount of cash ($750). Modern Art Meets Monopoly, Take Two When you land on a space you can either:
Modern Art Meets Monopoly, Take Three When you land on an unowned property, you auction it off...
Modification from the Conductor: I'd use rule (E) for Utilities and rules (A), (B), (C) and (C) again for Railroads. No Easy Monopolies When you land on the third unowned property in a monopoly, you may not purchase it outright if you own the other two properties. Instead, it must be sold at public auction (in which you can participate. Quick Auctions to speed up the game Use quick auctions as a way to get all the properties in play in a reasonable time. Whenever a doubles is thrown, the next unowned property clockwise from GO should be auctioned off by the banker, after the player throwing doubles completes his or her move. Expansion Sets There is one "official" expansion for Monopoly which was actually licensed by Parker Brothers. (If my sources are correct, it was originally produced by PB back in the 1940's... the most recent version by Chessex is OOP.) The "Stock Market" expansion adds stocks to the game, as well as extra Chance & Community Chest cards to 'power' the stock market... and a nifty space cover that turns Free Parking into the Stock Exchange. If you're not a big Monopoly fan, this isn't going to win you over, but it offers another alternative to the railroads to generate cash and keep your building plans afloat. (The design of the set goes very well with a regular Monopoly game, but doesn't match up with the art in many of the USAopoly sets.) Thanks to the wonders of the Web, there's another nifty expansion set available. Called Powers Monopoly by it's creators, it could more aptly be named "Cosmic Monopoly", as it's obviously the result of a head-on crash between Monopoly and Cosmic Encounter. I still haven't tried, but I was interested enough to download all the cards and print myself a set - now, to find the right victims, er... playtesters. (Powers Monopoly is no longer available at the website I found it at some years ago - so I've copied it to my site: Powers Monopoly.) Jonathan Degann (after reading about Cosmic Monopoly) opined that he'd like to see "Ursuppe Monopoly"... with weaker powers which could be bought, collected, and that would interact in novel ways. Anyone out there want to try and design this? Monopoly - Stock Exchange Chris Lawson described the following Monopoly innovation, designed by Dr. Reiner Knizia: "It features a Electronic gadget (about the size of a desk calculator) which tracks players stock holdings and works outs the dividend payouts and value of stock. "It's still Monopoly (the traditional board but with International companies instead of locations), you buy *shares* in a company when you land on the space (9 shares per company if I remember correctly). You can build offices and tower blocks (or whatever they are called) and receive dividends when other players next land on the space. There are no mortgages since you sell shares when strapped for cash. "What's amazing is just how little the game was allowed to be changed, the game design spec was so tight that many ideas or mechanisms were simply not allowed because "it wasn't Monopoly". Mind, the final result is something different from just the usual clone but the game includes the usual board and components, plus the electronic gadget. "I have no idea what "gamers" will make of it but it will be interesting to see what people think of it. We did playtest it during the evolution of the design and while it was still Monopoly, the additions (IMO) added something worthwhile to the game." Beyond Boardwalk & Park Place This OOP book (from the 1980's) evidently has some pretty cool stuff for spicing up Monopoly - I've never actually seen a copy, so I'll be relying on 'friends' from rec.games.board to give you some more information about it. (BTW, if anyone has a copy for sale, drop me a line!) According to Nicholas Goedert and Andrew Petrarca, one of the main "fixes" in the book is doubling the prices of all property. According to Andrew, "The single change of doubling the price to buy a property outright without it going to auction makes a tremendous difference. This change makes it impractical for players simply to purchase every property they land on. I find this more interesting, because it means that it's actually necessary to put some thought into the first few moves, rather than simply rolling the dice and plopping down the money for whatever property happens to end up under the token." Nicholas adds, "Face it, in the normal game, everyone buys everything they land on, making trade bait very luck-determined. In the "Beyond Boardwalk" variant, players get the first shot to buy what they land on, but most properties go up for auction, allowing for a lot more strategic planning, dealing, and bluffing." The other important "fix", says Andrew, is taking away the ability to mortgage properties. "Like the higher list prices, this acts to keep any property which isn't being developed on the auction block. It discourages players from holding properties just to keep them out of other players' hands, a practice which tends to bog down the game. With higher prices and no mortgages, if you want to keep that red property away from your opponent, you'd better -really- mean it, because $440-$480 is a lot of money to tie up out of spite in a game where money is tight. Better (and more interesting, IMO) to spend the money to develop your own properties instead." Dave Wallace (who may or may not have read "Beyond Boardwalk..." has this response to these fixes: "I'm not convinced that the game by-the-rules was broken to begin with, but if you do want to increase the decision-making associated with the original purchases of property, I think it would be better to decrease the initial cash given to each player rather than changing the prices of the properties. When you double the purchase price, you disturb the relationship of purchase prices vs. mortgage amounts, construction prices, and rents (unless you double these too). That would, among other things, make the railroads and utilities even less valuable than they are in the original game, and I hardly think they need to be less valuable. "In contrast, if you just decrease the initial cash, you don't disturb any of these relationships, and you have the advantage that you can fine-tune the amount of money in the economy much more sensitively than you can just by inflating the prices by 2x. I haven't tried playtesting this, but I suspect that even decreasing the initial cash to $1200 per player instead of $1500 would make a noticeable difference (assuming that you play with the auction rules in effect, of course). Cash is often running a bit tight for some players in a standard 4-player game by the time you are picking up the last few properties, and starting with $1200 each would cause the crunch to bite a bit earlier. If that's not enough for your tastes, you could try $1000 or $900. You might also want to vary the initial cash depending on the number of players to get the style of game you want. "If you want to make sure that you deflate the economy even more with this variant, you could add a house rule that all auctions have a minimum bid of the face value of the property, so that the last player with money can't just buy a railroad for $50 and make an instant $50 profit by mortgaging it. Of course, that might mean that some properties would go unbought. The standard rules let you start an auction at any price, and you could let this stand as a strategic risk of running out of money too quickly." So, there you have it - a quick look at a book I've never seen... and a rebuttal. Pretty good for the admission you paid to ride this train, eh? :-) Odds & Ends This is the stuff that didn't fit neatly under any category, but could possibly spice up Monopoly to epic proportions. With Just the Shirt on My Back... Begin the game with only $200 (as if you just passed Go). To quote Tim, "It would certainly add something to the decision about whether to buy a property or not. And those $10 rents for St. Charles would suddenly become a big deal, for both players." Less Chance... More Taxes... Get rid of the Chance/Community Chest cards: When you land on Chance, you are taxed $25 per house/$100 per hotel for each property *you* own on that particular row (for example, if you land on the Chance between Vermont and Oriental, you are only taxed on any houses/hotels you have on the Purple or Lt Blue properties.) When someone lands on Community Chest, *everyone* is taxed $25 per house/$100 per hotel for each property they own on that particular row. The Contractors Decide to "Get Smart"... Jonathan & I had a discussion via e-mail about the various merits of different ways of doing this... what follows is MY final take on our conversation (so if you don't like it, don't blame Jonathan.) Re-do the prices for building houses & hotels.
Greater Movement Control Give each player a set of six cards, 1-6. On their turn, they pick one of the cards from their hand and add the roll of one die to it. This gives you a little more power in how far you advance. If you're trying to move slowly, play the (1) and you'll move from 2-7 spaces. Vice versa, a play of (6) gives you at least 6 spaces, and possibly 12. A player must go through all of their die cards before taking them back into his hand. Greater Movement Control, Part Deux Add a Strategy Deck of 48 cards, composed as follows:
Every time a player passes or lands on Go, in addition to collecting his salary he picks a Strategy Card. He keeps this card face down until he chooses to use it. Strategy Cards may be traded or sold between players. A player may use a Strategy Card after he rolls the dice. He plays the card, adjusts the roll by the amount indicated on the card, and then places the card on the bottom of the Strategy Deck. For example, if a player rolls a "7" and then plays a "-2" Strategy Card, he moves his token 5 spaces. A player may never play more than one Strategy Card per turn. A modified roll can be as high as 14 (a +2 applied to a natural roll of 12) or as low as 0 (a -2 applied to a natural roll of 2). In the latter case, the player's token stays where it is and his turn proceeds just as if he had landed on that space. In addition, players only get credit for rolling doubles (which gives them an extra turn) if the natural roll is doubles and if no card is played. Players may threaten to use certain Strategy Cards (including those they don't possess) or may negotiate with other players about whether they will or will not play a card. However, once a player exposes a card and declares that he is playing it, the decision is final. When playing this variant, do not collect any money when landing on Free Parking. The Monopoly Companion and other good stuff... Some final words from the Conductor on the subject of Monopoly: 1. Don't play to the death. There is a "short game" variant at the end of each Monopoly rulebook that suggests playing until the 2nd bankruptcy, then counting up money, property & buildings. Use this idea - especially if you're playing multiple game in one night. (They also suggest dealing out two deeds to each player and making the requirement for hotels 3 houses, but we ignore that part.) 2. Check out the Philip Orbanes book, THE MONOPOLY COMPANION. It's the only currently published book on Monopoly and has some very interesting strategy tips, as well as a detailed walk-through of the history of the game and the rules. (To their credit, Hasbro uses this book as their "official" source on their website, even though it blows holes in the "Charles Darrow invented this game" myth.) The author is the designer of Cartel, Trumpet, & the recently released Monopoly Card Game (which is a decent little rummy-like family game with some interesting trading rules)... as well as the author of the history of Parker Brothers. 3. One of the nicest things about THE MONOPOLY COMPANION is it's clear listing of tournament Monopoly rules... which include these *very* important statements:
Like the plethora of house rules I listed at the top of the page, trading "futures" or "promises" in Monopoly serves only to extend the game. Be wise and avoid this game-lengthening trading system. 4. Just a short "thank-you" to my grandma, who was willing to get down on the living room floor with my dad & his friends... and with my sister & I to play not only Monopoly but a host of other games. Her advice when I left for college - "Get good grades so you can have fun" - still applies. I'm eternally grateful to her for developing my love of playing games, whether I win or lose. Departures Take a ride on the Reading and check out the following Monopoly-related sites... BoardgameGeek entry for Monopoly BoardgameGeek entry for Monopoly - Stock Exchange (designed by Reiner Knizia) About.com entry for Monopoly (where the ever-wily Erik Arenson has collected a number of Monopoly sites for you to peruse) Monopoly.com is Parker Brothers/Hasbro's "official" Monopoly site USAopoly are the folks who publish most of those odd-themed versions of Monopoly, like my beloved National Parks and Muppet editions Probabilities & Statistics for Monopoly... is more than you'll ever want to know about whether you will land on a particular space on the board | ||
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