I will forever shout it from the rooftops. Monopoly is a 30 minute game, regardless of how many players you have. If you play by the actual rules, and none of the house rules you’ve made up for yourself, it’s really quick and really fun. No families need to be shattered over the game. No friendships lost. Just play by the actual rules!
This is it! Everyone I’ve ever met that hates monopoly doesn’t play by the rules. They don’t auction, they put all the money under free parking, and I’ve even had some people that increase the $100 when you pass go once all of the properties are bought. Of course you hate the game, you’ve been playing it wrong.
I’d love to know where the free parking thing cane from. I distinctly remember not doing that as a kid but then suddenly I don’t know why in my teens(I think) it appeared in a way like it was not doing it was incorrect.
Never heard of the pass go thing though.
The Pass Go thing came from a friend of the family that came over for Christmas dinner one year. It went from $100 to $300 once all the properties were bought, and the reason was “so everyone can afford to land on hotel spaces.” So, yeah, completely defeating the point of late stage of the game.
Exactly, play by the original rules, and play aggressive as all hell. You don’t need almost any property, it’s just fine to mortgage everything but your main set, the goal is to get one very developed set ASAP.
Not only is this a pretty effective way to win (a conservative player who lands once on a very developed property is basically out of the game), it also makes the game progress much faster, especially if other players are willing to concede before the bitter end. 2 or 3 players like this, and you’ve actually got a recipe for a decent time.
Monopoly has one great rule (or lack of specificity), that it doesn’t put any restricting on when you are able to trade (doesn’t even say it has to be your turn!). This creates a great ten minutes or so when most of the properties are bought and people are making interesting deals with each other.
Everything else in the game is bad because there are very few interesting decisions to make. The dice tell you where you go and the space you land on tells you what to do. Strictly you “decide” whether or not to buy an available property if you land on it, but it’s virtually always a good idea. In the rare auction case you can decide your bid. You can decide which order you mortgage off your properties if you are out of money. I think one of the chance/CC cards has a choice on it? Even buying houses is kind of dull since you have to build them evenly across the block.
It’s a critique of capitalism, there not being many choices and alway accruing capital that’s limited in supply is the exact point of the game.
Real life is still worse though. Imagine being added to an already-in-progress game of Monopoly where you start with no money and everyone else already has hotels on every property.
100% true. Note that I was responding to someone who called it quick and fun, so the lack of choices seemed like a relevant point there.