One Step At A Time

[billroper]

One of the things that I gave daisy_knotwise for Christmas -- in anticipation of it being useful someday and the likelihood that I might not be able to find it by the time it was truly useful -- was the Phineas and Ferb edition of Monopoly. I figured that she would enjoy having it, even if she wasn't a big Monopoly fan and we could play it with Katie and Julie when they were older.

Naturally, they wanted to play it now.

And so late this afternoon, we opened it up. Gretchen and Julie played as a team, while Katie and I played as individuals. The game went on and on.

Eventually, Gretchen left us to push her piece around the board while she went to get dinner together. And not too long after that, Katie went bankrupt to the absent Gretchen.

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued. And then there was a dinner break.

We resumed after dinner with Katie and Julie playing Gretchen's position as a team against me. Gretchen went out to return books to the library.

The game was more or less stalemated. Someone might eventually win, but only by luck. And I wanted it over.

So I declared Katie and Julie the winners on Gretchen's behalf.

And then I went down to the studio. :)

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I can remember thinking Monopoly was fun when I was a little kid. While I was in college, one of my office mates was part of a group that got to write a PLATO version of Monopoly for CS 327 (Software Engineering). It was a pretty complete and faithful implementation of the original game, and with the computer handling the bookkeeping and with a fairly good user interface, it took 10 minutes to play a complete game. Ever since then, the though of spending hours to play a game of monopoly makes me shudder.

[whl.livejournal.com]

Monopoly certainly can go on and on. There are optional folk rules that can shorten things a bit though. Wikipedia does NOT seem to be a good source of them, however...

[tarkrai.livejournal.com]

I brokered a local rule change that makes games go MUCH faster in 3 or more person games.

Limited Partnerships

Say you have two properties, and someone else has the third. You can go into partnership with them to develop the property. You can negotiate a 2/3 1/3 split, or make it a 50/50 split if the other person contributes 2/3 of the house build (which is generally the case). Any other players landing there pay rent, and you split it according to the terms of the agreement.

You and your partner, of course, both land on the entire color for free.

Nothing prevents you from partnering with other players on different properties.

Partnerships can be dissolved at any time. However, when one partner declares an end to a partnership, one of two actions MUST occur:

1. One partner buys the other out at a mutually acceptable price
2. If a buyout cannot be arranged, then all development is sold back to the bank, the proceeds split 50/50 (regardless of partnership arrangement) and the ownership of the properties reverts to their original owners (ie- back to the start, but hopefully both are richer).

When only two players are left, all partnerships must be dissolved, and play resumes normally.

We referred to this as "Cutthroat Monopoly".