Current Events > Worst part of Monopoly games is the forced auction.

(+) Yeah! (+)

When I played the boardgame, it was buy or pass.

The worst part is all the bad house rules people use to slow the game down to an hours long slog, the auction helps prevent that

I played Monopoly for the first time in probably 10-15 years a few weeks ago. We decided to play it by the book, so auctions were a part of the game.

And all properties were just bought outright with no auctions. It was a 5 or 6 player game, so that probably had something to do with it. Enough money to buy them all up when there are so many players.

The worst part of Monopoly is playing the game itself. I can't stand Monopoly. The rules always change depending on who is running the game.

MC_BatCommander posted...

The worst part is all the bad house rules people use to slow the game down to an hours long slog, the auction helps prevent that

Absolutely this. The forced auction and removal of money from the economy (no free parking jackpot), are both necessary things.

If you're not playing with a ruleset that includes robbery, stealing from the bank, and property theft are you even actually playing Monopoly?

Ivany2008 posted...

The worst part of Monopoly is playing the game itself. I can't stand Monopoly. The rules always change depending on who is running the game.

The only rules Ive seen people change up are

Does any money go to the center of the board for free parking?

Do you get $400 if you land directly on Go?

Do you enforce the Pay 10% extra to pay off a mortgage rule?

Do you enforce auction bidding?

Otherwise, it is standard in my experience

I think monopoly is based on, whoever actually gets the first one just wins. But I never played it in any competitive manner beside by myself when bored.

Yes, you can indeed do that.

Ivany2008 posted...

The worst part of Monopoly is playing the game itself. I can't stand Monopoly. The rules always change depending on who is running the game.

No, the worst part is that Parker Brothers is *literally* the only company to be able to sell the game, so this also puts it in the "ironic" category.

Inflation rule

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_Deal

This is a great alternative to traditional Monopoly, mostly because it bypasses the thing people hate most about Monopoly (the long-ass playtime).

Elimination games almost always suck. And the longer the time between the first and last elimination, the worse they get.

masterpug53 posted...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_Deal

This is a great alternative to traditional Monopoly, mostly because it bypasses the thing people hate most about Monopoly (the long-ass playtime).

The game is not long if you play by the rules. It gets longer when people introduce house rules.

A game of Monopoly should not take more than an hour to play.

However, Monopoly's game mechanics are outdated and thus one should be playing better games.

Worst part of Monopoly games is the forced auction.

Oh man this just unlocked a memory of playing the Sega Genesis Monopoly game as a little kid and having absolutely no idea what to do with the auctions

I had no idea what mortgage at the back of the property cards meant when I was 10 years old playing the game, and I have no idea what it means today at nearly 40. The amount of rule making up we did was wild, but to be fair the instructions are highly unclear after the initial distribution of money from the bank.

mystic_belmont posted...

The game is not long if you play by the rules. It gets longer when people introduce house rules.

A game of Monopoly should not take more than an hour to play.

However, Monopoly's game mechanics are outdated and thus one should be playing better games.

Even an hour's a big ask for a lot of people, especially with the elimination factor where the first person out is left sitting on their hands until everyone else is finished.

Monopoly Deal hands typically take 15 min to complete; it's a lot easier to talk people into playing 3-4 hands of Deal rather than one game of traditional Monopoly, because that way everyone has a much greater chance to get a win under their belt.

mystic_belmont posted...

The game is not long if you play by the rules. It gets longer when people introduce house rules.

The house always wins

I hate the auction rule, that one is out any time I am playing.

Monopoly has to be the only board game I know of where you can make up rules, and the other players agree upon them.

If someone wants to play Monopoly, I ask what they like about it and then we play a completely different game.

Lords of Vegas and Chinatown probably provides a better player experience.

i dont think i've ever played a full game of monopoly.

CirillaRiannon posted...

Let me guess, you throw a tantrum when they tell you they just find it fun, and they decide to play your games to make you feel better?

Only asking because you give off that "enlightened" manchild energy.

Not really, that seems closer to your overreaction to his post.

mystic_belmont posted...

The game is not long if you play by the rules. It gets longer when people introduce house rules.

A game of Monopoly should not take more than an hour to play.

I remember reading this a lot in more recent years and thinking it myself so not that long ago I played a game with my cousins and we actually did all the rules as written, no house rules.

A few hours later there was still no end in sight and it stopped. I dunno why people say this - you spend most of the time just circling the board paying miniature sums for non-housed properties while gaining 200 on each loop

CirillaRiannon posted...

Let me guess, you throw a tantrum when they tell you they just find it fun, and they decide to play your games to make you feel better?

Only asking because you give off that "enlightened" manchild energy.

Lol why couldn't you have said this without fishing out a random alt to post it, is what I'm wondering about curiously

mystic_belmont posted...

If someone wants to play Monopoly, I ask what they like about it and then we play a completely different game.

Lords of Vegas and Chinatown probably provides a better player experience.

If someone wants to play Monopoly I tell them no, and then pull out Dominion instead. No, it doesn't have the same ruleset, but its better. Literally anything is better than Monopoly, outside of Communopoly, but that's house rules. If they still want to play Monopoly, I ask politely, but firmly for them to leave.

What is sad during covid I bought a new board. Since I was helping my friend at the time I figure we could play it. Month of so later she went blind. Never got to play one game. I put it away in a cupboard. After she passed i forgot it was there and after her estate was settled every one came by to pick up what wasnt already doled out. Her daughter found it and claimed it. I just let her have it. I really wanted it though.

The forced auction is meant to quicken the game and encourage people to spend their money, both to build monopolies and to try to prevent opponents from doing so. If no monopolies are ever built yet players are allowed to maintain their bankrolls, which is often what happens without an auction rule (because then monopolies will only get formed by sheer dice roll luck + properties not being very expensive to buy by default), this usually results in a "stalemated" game. I would say this is where the core of the gameplay even lies; you're basically stripping out the soul of the game by not doing the auctions.

I can only guess that some people decided the auction process was a bit too involved/intense for young children initially learning the game to grasp and decided to simply omit that part of the rules when introducing them to the game, and doing so became a standard. Ironically, this became a big part of the reason the game gained a reputation for being a long, boring slog. A lot of the other custom rules people use, such as the ubiquitous "Free Parking" rule, also help prevent money from going back to the bank, which ultimately makes the game way "easier" and contributes greatly to creating stalemates.

I feel like if you're going to play the game with custom rules, they pretty much have to be rules that make the economy "harder" in a sense. For instance, I tend to feel like passing Go awards too much money and I could see it being lowered; also default property prices are generally on the low side and could stand to be raised.

Forced auctions are good because they quietly encourage what is already an optimal playstyle: buy every property you land on, almost without exception.

People ignore a bunch of the rules in Monopoly, then complain about the game taking 3+ hours and don't make the connection that all the rules they're ignoring are the ones that make the game finish in a reasonable amount of time.

Yeah I have to say I don't really understand what people are saying about forced auctions rule making such a big difference, in my experience everyone just buys everything they land on anyway and nothing really ever gets auctioned