I prefer this approach: <a href="http://imgur.com/a/vX3zm" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/a/vX3zm</a><p>> Because of the way the game is designed, this inevitably results in one person acquiring a majority of the assets on the board, and beginning the slow, painful, friendship-destroying process of grinding the other players out of the game, turn by turn. This is why Monopoly starts as a fun exciting romp, only to turn into a bitter cesspool of despair.
The site is hugged to death, so I'll just be that person who makes assumptions based on the headline, and writes comments without reading.<p>Assuming we're talking about the game, my favorite fixes are anything that increase player autonomy, interaction, and decision-making, and decreases randomness.<p>My favorite variations are probably old-hat to many players, but they include allowing completely unregulated deals between players (e.g. loans, swaps, etc.) and allowing all players to bid on every single unowned property that a player lands on (sometimes with some kind of addition such as the landing player getting the right of first refusal at twice the price, or something, but never simply letting them purchase at face-value).<p>The second rule -- putting all landed-on properties on the open market -- really allow people to try out different strategies, whether it's trying to buy everything at the start, no matter the cost, or trying to be more cautious with money.
I could only get a cached text version of the link to load, but I'm surprised to see not a single mention of The Landlord's Game. It was the precursor to Monopoly developed by Elizabeth Magie, and intentionally designed to be an unfair and unbalanced game in order to demonstrate certain economic principals.<p><pre><code> The earliest known version of Monopoly, known as The
Landlord's Game, was designed by an American, Elizabeth
Magie, and first patented in 1904 but existed as early
as 1902. Magie, a follower of Henry George, originally
intended The Landlord's Game to illustrate the economic
consequences of Ricardo's Law of Economic rent and the
Georgist concepts of economic privilege and land value
taxation.
The game was created to be a "practical demonstration
of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual
outcomes and consequences". She based the game on the
economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry
George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich
property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some
people could find it hard to understand why this happened and
what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist
ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might
be easier to demonstrate. Magie also hoped that when played
by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of
unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into
adulthood.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_board_game_Monopoly
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game
</code></pre>
<i>(edits: typos and formatting)</i>
Our house monoply varient involves a third die. The third die has n+2 sides where n is the number of players. If a one is rolled, everyone takes a bong hit. If the highest number is rolled everyone takes a sip of water. The rest of the numbers are handed out to each person. When the die comes up on their number it's their turn. This isn't as much of an advantage as you'd think it'd be. It's easy to run out of money early, and not go forever later.<p>Also:
-Auctions
-No free parking
-Immunity trading
-Three die rolls = jail
-Doubles = same player goes again as their turn isn't over
Alternatively, you could play a well-designed game. There's no shortage.<p><a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame" rel="nofollow">https://www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame</a>
A friend of mine once made a "Dungeons and Dragons Monopoly" variant where each character was a D&D class and the spaces were re-named as iconic D&D locations. If a character landed on the same space as another, they'd then get to "fight" (roll two dice and compare numbers) and the winner could steal a property from the other. It turned out to be one of the more fun Monopoly variants I've ever played, as it allowed monopolies to be created easier (fighting to get that third property someone wouldn't trade you) and thus the game progressing faster.
Just add the hostile take over expansion called Risk.<p><a href="http://www.gilwood.org/riskopoly.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.gilwood.org/riskopoly.htm</a>
In 2010 I met a guy who claimed to be the US Monopoly champion at a boardgame meetup in LA. I asked him how there could be a serious championship since the game's rules are so simple and professional players would simply play the statistics. He said the whole game is about convincing people to give you what you want, he was very good at it, and it turned out that his regular profession was lawyer.