Get a copy of Dungeon (from TSR). Use the cards and treasures. Use the Monopoly board.
In order to buy any property, you must draw a Dungeon card. If itâs a monster, you must fight it. If you lose, instead of dying, you leave half your wealth under the square and move back. If thereâs an undefeated monster on that space, you must fight that monster. And if you lose, leave half of everything you have and so on.
If you win, you can buy the property and proceed from there. Oh, and monsters can retroactively inhabit any and all houses built. So, watch it.
Far more interesting. I wonât play monopoly any other way.
Ah, strategy!
A friend once ended a protracted game of Risk with a comet strike.
Itâs in the picture of alternative games at the end of the original article too.
Iâve played it a few of times with my family and liked it, plus itâs a good game to play with people of all ages.
Like Monopoly, itâs so bad because it not designed so much as a game, but as a pedagogical tool. Rather than teaching Georgist economics like Monopoly, it is supposed to teach colorsâŚ
Neither are really fun, but between the Candyland dynamic of
âletâs see who can get to the King Kandy firstâ
and the Monopoly dynamic of
âletâs all be sociopathic plutocrats collecting wealth so we can use it to try to rent each other to death - the winner gets to watch everyone else sell their houses, mortgage/sell off their properties at a loss, and eventually go bankruptâ
Iâll take Candyland.
Yes, and if you can get them laughing hard enough, you can steal their Get Out of Jail Free card without them noticing. Now thatâs strategy!
When I was 9, we ended up with a Risk set and a Monopoly set. It took about 2 plays of Monopoly before I figured out that making one set of properties unaffordable to land on ends the misery fairly quickly. Risk I had some praeternatural inborn knowledge of, apparently, because I won every time we played and fairly quickly. Either that, or Iâm very ruthless and should never be trusted with the tiniest shred of power.
Family game night didnât last terribly long.
I donât think family board game night lasted too long at our house. My sister liked Monopoly, nobody else did. I kinda liked Cluedo and then Scotland Yard. I used to like playing Stratego at school, but I was dreadful at it.
I preferred to play Solo Whist and then Bridge but my sister didnât so we struggled to get a fourth hand most of the time.
I have never played Risk, just makes me think of Red Dwarf and Rimmerâs Risk campaign diaries.
I keep reading about interesting sounding board games, but I need a group to play with, I guess. Settlers of Catan and Agricola just sound a bit dull. I tried the android version of Catan, didnât like it.
I donât actually like winning games much, although I donât like losing either.
Cards, people. Always have a deck (or two) of cards with you. You can match the game to the number and age of people in the room, play for funsies or keep score with any old piece of paper, and stop whenever the group agrees itâs time.
Monopoly just isnât old-school enough. 
I learned to count cards when I was 8 or 9. Grandmaâs galpals only let me play Canasta with them twice.
To expand on this, and also the comment about Risk.
I read through this recently:
The whole âstabbing people in the backâ mechanic just sounds awful.
See also this (by the same people, I think, or related to it, at least).
I used to like playing Risk with the fam. and did a little too well, so they collectively agreed at the start of every game that I was the immediate threat that should be collectively targeted and crippled/destroyed. Then it became less fun, though I still pulled out a win sometimes if I got enough good initial countries and I could get them to fear each otherâs hegemony enough.
That can be fun as long as everyone involved is aware it is that kind of game.
I basically ended a session of whatever the board game version of Game of Thrones was by deciding to have fun and just start attacking anyone and everyone as there was an obvious winner at that point and it wasnât me. The others who were struggling didnât like that.
I donât play board games, but I do read about them. Same way I read about PC games despite not owning a PC. Iâm funny that way.
If youâve followed any of the Badass games weâve played here (why havenât you ever joined in??), youâll have noticed that I always end up playing co-op, even when I try to make my character different. Iâm just too nice, I guess.
When I was in my early 20s, a friend and I would sometimes go out to coffeehouses and play gin rummy to pass the time. More often than not, people would be interested in what the heck we were doing and end up joining in (especially if the place was crowded). Nice way to meet people, especially since we were just playing for fun, with no score-keeping.
Not that one, this was a more risk like game with each person playing a house.
That is a Game Of Thrones version of Battlelore which is a fantasy version of Memoirâ44 which in turn is a WW2 version of Battle Cry.
Memoir '44 is supposed to be really good but I have never had the chance to play a game.
The one from Richard Borg I really want to try is his Ancients game.
