Comment by SamBam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SamBam | Hacker News Reader

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.

Assuming we're talking about the game, my favorite fixes are anything that increase player autonomy, interaction, and decision-making, and decreases randomness.

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).

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.

> 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).

AFAIK this isn't a variant, this is more or less the actual real rule of the game (or something halfway between). If a player refuses to buy something when they land on it, it's supposed to go up for auction with no minimum bid.

No one plays that way, but it's the official rule.

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Monopoly/Official_Rules

I'd never actually played with auctions (had no idea they were in the rules, which I'd learned from friends/relatives and not from reading the rulebook) until I played the video game version for NES (years after it came out), which also happens to be the least-hellish way to play the game that I've experienced, I think because it handles running auctions and the nuts-and-bolts of keeping track of mortgages and crap like that that's so tedious in the real game.

Of course people play that way. It's the rules. :)

I'm not sure if you're joking (smiley lacked a clear target), but just in case you're not: Monopoly is somewhat famously almost never played by the actual as-written rules. Indeed, most people know the rules they learned as children and are shocked to discover they aren't playing by "the rules".

Right, to be clear the variation is that it always goes up for auction.

The way my family always played growing up was that the player who landed on an unowned property could but it at face value, but if they didn't want to, it automatically went to auction. I honestly wasn't particularly fond of this, as if you were losing closer to the end of the game and landed on something unowned, as you often had to end up letting the player who was winning buy it for fairly cheap because you couldn't afford to spend the money on properties that wouldn't help you. I also noticed that most of the people who I played with outside my family did not play with this rule, adding to my frustration.

Another thing I remember us doing that nobody else seemed to was that if you bought/traded for a mortgaged property from another player, you had to pay 10% of the mortgage price to the bank if you didn't want to pay to unmortgage it immediately. I'm not sure if this is in the official rules, but as a young kid with no understanding of how real-world mortgages or interest worked, this seemed rather unusual and was somewhat frustrating as well.

> allowing all players to bid on every single unowned property that a player lands on

This seems to have been the rule from Magie's 1923 patent.

"1. Land in Use - A player stopping on this space is supposed to be occupying and using the land, and pays to the owner thereof the amount of land rent indicated. If there is an Improvement on the land, he pays $100 in addition to the land rent. If a player is himself the owner of the space, he takes from the board the amount of rent indicated. If the space is for sale, that is, if the corresponding card is still on the board, all the players bid for it, the highest bidder paying to the board the amount of his bid and taking the card into his hand.[...]"

https://www.google.com/patents/US1509312

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edit: and the 1906 rule, except that the landing player just has to meet the highest bid, not beat it.

"RULE 7. Land Rent. --- When a player stops upon a lot owned by another player, he must pay the land rent to the owner. If he stops upon one of his own lots he pays nothing. If the lot is not yet owned by any of the players, it is "For Sale" and the player stopping upon it may purchase it at the original sale price, provided no other player bids more for it. If the player who has stopped upon it is willing to pay the highest price bid, he has the first option. If he cannot or does not want to pay the highest price bid, then the player bidding the highest price must take the lot at the price he has bid for it. If the first player does not by a lot and some other player does, the first player pays the land rent to the purchaser. If no player buys it the land rent is paid into the PUBLIC TREASURY. If the lot is thought the purchaser or takes the corresponding Title Deed card from the pack."

http://landlordsgame.info/games/lg-1906/lg-1906_egc-rules.ht...

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