Making "Monopoly" less of a negative-sum game

[Pax Communisma]

I hate how this game always ends in some degree of economic collapse. Folks buy properties and decrease the amount of cash in the economy; properties generate no net revenue for the economy. Everybody doing this leads to economic collapse.

I was thinking a somewhat good way of ameliorating this (i.e. having properties yield some sort of "social surplus") might be as follows: when a player lands on Free Parking, that player receives a fraction (say, 10%) of the total RENT value of all his assets.

Does this sound good? I haven't play-tested it yet, and I don't know if it's really all that great for regular Monopoly, but I think it'd be great for Riskopoly (Google for details ).

Thanks,
Pax

 

[Theige]

Its a game. There is no "economy"

 

[aelf]

Wouldn't that be solved by simple money creation?

 

[LightFang]

The point is that the game is a parable for the dangers of unfettered capitalism.

Also, since the bank can never run out of money, there's not really a decrease in the cash.

On the plus side, I really want to try Riskopoly now.

 

[aelf]

The moral of the story is more like "Whoever controls the utilities controls the universe". Hmm... that gives me an amusing idea.

 

[Bill3000]

The moral of the story is more like "Whoever controls the utilities controls the universe". Hmm... that gives me an amusing idea.

Conquer all of the sewers of the universe?

 

[LightFang]

Conquer all of the sewers of the universe?

It sounds silly, but you have no idea, man!

 

[Narz]

Monopoly sucks, play Settlers of Catan or better yet, Cities & Knights of Catan.

The article talks about how Monopoly in inherently a hostile & fairly boring game.

 

[Pax Communisma]

Monopoly sucks, play Settlers of Catan or better yet, Cities & Knights of Catan.

The article talks about how Monopoly in inherently a hostile & fairly boring game.

I agree with the article, own a copy of Settlers (though have not gotten around to playing it yet, unfortunately), and spend a fair amount of time now and again on Boardgamegeek.com. I try to avoid regular Monopoly (and regular Risk, for that matter), but find Riskopoly compelling. ...That is, assuming I can tweak the Monopoly component so that it's at least slightly positive-sum-ish.

 

[Camikaze]

The amount of money supply in the hypothetical economy does not decrease, it just becomes more unevenly distributed, i.e. it goes to the already rich bank. So it shows what happens when you have an unbridled free market- the rich get richer.

 

[Hygro]

Monopoly is only fun with strict rules, otherwise the game gets dragged out. Already the frequency of which players pass go greatly increases the money supply.

 

[classical_hero]

Don't forget that you get salary in the game, so tht increases the wealth of the player and when people have money, they can use it to invest in either property or utilities and the more you get the better you are off. It is just a simple gme that is not real life, so if you are so worried about a board game, then you have too much time on your hands.

 

[Mise]

Yeah, there's LOADS of board games that have far better economies than this... Catan is good, but I'm really, really bad at it, and I don't know why.

Race for the Galaxy is amazingly rich and diverse, and you can basically choose what kind of economy you want to set up, depending on what cards you put down; the cards splice abilities onto one another (reminiscent of MTG, except everyone draws from the same deck) so that you can set up an economy devoted to military expansion, trading, development, etc.

Plus it's set in space!!!!

 

[Ammar]

I don't get it. When I play Monopoly the winner usually ends up with more cash than all the player combined started with. Not even counting other assets. Don't like Catan that much, it's fun for a few times but a slight advantage turns into a victory too quickly. The Civilization boardgame (not the Sid Meier one, the Avalon Hills version) is much better in that regard.

 

[Zelig]

Monopoly is only fun with strict rules, otherwise the game gets dragged out. Already the frequency of which players pass go greatly increases the money supply.

Yeah, the rules clearly state: "A player landing [on Free Parking] does not receive any money, property or any reward of any kind. This is just a free resting space."

Breaking that rule makes monopoly suck even more than it already does.

 

[PiMan]

The house rule my family always played regarding Free Parking was to be able to collect all taxes and fines paid since the last time someone landed there. It doesn't increase the money supply, but it does make the game more fun.

 

[Masada]

... this is an argument for monetarism surely?

 

[Cutlass]

Monopoly is about destroying all competitors. That is inherently a negative sum game.

 

[Synobun]

I plan on being the creator of Commieopoly.

 

[holy king]

riskopoly sounds interesting, but why do the use the vanilla rules (can attack as often as possible) and not the deluxe rules?