My house rules for Monopoly are āwe donāt play that hereā.
See, I was under the impression that what made Monopoly so intolerable were those who did not play by the official rules. For example, putting money under Free Parking prolongs the game unnecessarily.
āmuch better than the board gameā
Thatās not saying much, when the bar is set so low that itās essentially lying on the groundā¦
Every house rule for Monopoly Iāve ever heard made the game worse. Much, much worse. Itās my belief that most people who think monopoly is a ābadā game, or too long, or boring, have never actually played the game correctly. More people than not have actually told me they didnāt know auctioning properties was even a thing! Iāll agree that it has issues and improvements could be made, but the actual game played by the rules as written can be fun, and Iāll fight anyone who says different.
Risk actually is a bad game though.
ETA: oh yeah, and I tried Monopoly Deal quite a long time ago, I remember it being actually quite fun! For whatever that is worth.
Itās important to let your kids play it, to give them an important life lesson in recognizing and possibly avoiding monopolies and āyouāve lost before you startedā situations in real life.
Weāve been playing this at work for almost 8 years. We had to add a few extra cards:
Free Parking - Steals all of someoneās money (Hotel card)
Luxury Tax - Takes one down card from another playerās hand (Go card)
Eminent Domain - Steals one card from a set. (House card)
Jail - One playerās turn is skipped (1 money card)
Double the rent can also be used for Birthday & Debt Collector
So this is like āMille Bornesā, which I thought was also from Parker Brothers. Cards that give an advantage, cards that can set you back, and whatever situation you get into, thereās card to get you out, though it may have already been played.
But instead if. Road race, it uses the Monopoly theme.
I love this game. It says 8+ on the box but my 5-1/2 daughter plays a mean hand, sheās beaten me more than once.
Play the Democraticaly Expropriate Your Corporate Oppressors version. You may as well play the most fun version of the game.
Well of course we used to play risk with two house rules that made it much worse.
1.) We let the defender choose whether to roll two dice or one AFTER the attacker had rolled. This made combat itself marginally less boring because the defender actually got to make a choice. But this tilted the odds towards the defender enough to make assembling enough troops for an invasion much more difficult.
2.) We never regarded the counter set as limiting. So we would pillage other games for pieces to help represent the 200 or more armies sitting in the Ukraine. This meant that usually nobody could āwinā and the game was over when the impatient little brother flipped over the board.
We love this game in my house. Itās the holiday go to game, expecially tied with a nice Shiraz and friends late at night.
We had to decide fair use rules of the property wild card, other than that it works for us as a fun game where careful strategy and taking a risk both pay off
Iād been tinkering with ideas for rules such as Breaking and Entering, The bank picking cards from the unbought pile one time everyoneās gone over (reposessing unused lots.) Chance cards to deal with sudden foreclosure (your tennents turned out to be meth dealers, property demed a health hazard.ā (property has become superfund site due to neighborhood kid building a nuclear reactor in his back yard.)
Basically trying to do things a little diferent all while acknowledging how crappy it is.
Iāve kinda fallin in with a grand group that actually roleplays the whole time and has minor āeventsā involving tennets and gang violence and dystopian type antics going on all while the game plays.
Risk, the original game, is one of my least favorite gaming experiences of all time. Endless, tedious, and seemingly designed to destroy friendships.
Pretty much all of the Risk spinoffs hugely improve on it, most importantly with the ā5 turnsā rule that gives the game an actual ending. Risk 2210, Risk Godstorm, and even the Star Wars Risk versions are a lot of fun. My gamer housemate has the Risk Onyx Edition thatās a smartly refined version I enjoy.
I agree completely. Iāll take Monopoly over the tedium of Risk any day of the week. And youāre right - most people donāt understand the rules. They donāt know about the mandatory auction if someone lands on property they donāt buy. They donāt know when it makes sense to stay in jail. They donāt know that Park Place and Boardwalk are sucker buys. They donāt know at what point in the game you should pay the set tax, and when you should pay the percentage.
Growing up, we never had the opportunity to slowly come to that realization that weād never win at Monopoly, because . . . my mother could whoop all of us with only two-three turns around the board. She started us out at about age 7-8, and even when we all got into high school, the story was the same. If we only played with us siblings, the game could go on for awhile, but we would be so interested in developing strategies amongst ourselves to try to beat Mom at a later time that we never got to the āflip the board over in frustrationā point. To this day, I still donāt know how she did it, and did it consistently.
Side note: Dad never played Monopoly with her. EVER.
psst: she cheated because she hated the game too. 
I agree, I suspect cheating.
