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A Monopoly on Monopoly Rules

In Game On on 25 August 2006. Tagged , .

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I don’t get it. As some of you know, I grew up in a number of cities/countries/continents (well ok, mostly HK and Vancouver - the rest probably isn’t considered “growing up” tho I’d make a case for it). Where was I? So I played Monopoly as a kid like everyone else but I probably played it first in Hong Kong.

Remember Monopoly? Remember the rules? Remember when you’d actually read the rules on about the fifth time you play and suddenly realize the rule you thought was a rule actually isn’t at all?

Every kid has their “house rules” for Monopoly and they range from obscure to geeky to downright universal. For example, here’s two rules paraphrased:

If you land on GO instead of passing it, you get $400 instead of $200.

If you need to pay taxes, it goes in the middle pot. When someone lands on Free Parking, they get the middle pot.

Neither of those rules are in the rulebook and yet, every kid knows these rules exist. Some are aware of their unofficial status while other believe it to be part of the basic rule set but either way, we just knew. How is this possible?! Every child around the world that played Monopoly somehow knew these same side house rules? I’d go back to Vancouver and the same rules were mentioned. Don’t forget, we’re also talking pre-internet.

I just don’t get it.


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Viewing 6 Comments

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    Iona and Peter Opie: "Children's Games in Street and Playground" and "The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren" document the instant transmission of new stories from one end of a country to another, overnight, well before internet. Check out these books, then the 'universal house rules' face won't be so mysterious. human culture starts early.
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    Back in high school, a bunch of my friends and I "rediscovered" monopoly and played somewhat competively over a summer. Much later, after college we sometimes incorporated it into our Poker Nights. We indeed reread the real rules (after the fifth or so time as a matter of fact), but opted to use the "universal" house rules that you mentioned. Even with new people joining us from other cities, they instinctively knew these rules. One of the charitable organizations I'm involved with has an annual Monopoly tournament that plays by the strict rules, but when we get together at the same table we make a pact to play by the "regular" house rules.

    I just saw this advertised on TV last night - a Monopoly update called "Here and Now". This is a flash site of their new board: http://www.hasbro.com/monopoly/default.cfm?page... and I'm very curious if they have updated the rules accordingly.
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    I've never heard of the 400-land-on-Go rule, but the tax pot I've seen in the Midwest. If I remembered right, that came from someone else's family, since mine never played with that rule. (In fact, I don't think we had any house rules for Monopoly at all.)
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    How interesting that I made a quick reference to this just a few weeks ago!

    I noticed too that I guess barely anyone (I know) plays by the official rules, because ... well, whenever one of us announced that we should try to play the "right way", he/she would then begin reading aloud from the front of that leaflet. Around the third rule, we either got confused (because of how contradicting it was to our normal play), or someone would evitably tell them to shut up and let's just start playing already.

    Plus, in most cases, it was agreed that we already had a working set of "rules" that made the game fun enough. And in the first few instances, someone would remember a "little known rule" when called for, and as long as several other players around the board knew about it as well, it was played.

    Huh. Come to think of it, that sounds suspiciously like the rules of Calvinball.
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    Hey -- just to further confirm the ubiquity of those rules, both Elly (Cambridge, UK) and myself (Cape Town & Durban, South Africa) knew those too. That said, both of our mothers really objected to rules not in the rulebooks so we weren't allowed to play them for family games!!
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    This is the original social network. Playing games pulls in a variety of players from different settings and backgrounds. We play with family and friends on trips. The set game is a common interaction and minor rule modifications (house rules) add fun. As we interact with various different sets of players we pick-up on different rules that add to the fun.

    There was a great book on Monopoly in the early 80s or late 70s that included a list of common house rules. Nearly everybody that was a semi-serious Monopoly player I knew had it (often a gift from "loved ones". But even those who did not have the book knew the various house rules as I moved from Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Central California, Bay Area, and England.

    I had a friend at Berkeley who had regionalized rules to where he thought they came from, based on where he learned about them or where the people who used the certain house rules came from. This was pre-internet. He had it down fairly well, so when somebody laid out their house rules he would ask if they were from, say Seattle, and he was often right.

    The house rules that travelled well were simple. Rules that did not travel well included landing on all of the community spots in one trip around the board required the player with the least property and cash the option to trade assets with you at no cost. That one was enjoyed, but was not simple enough (too much counting money and property values, that took away from playing the game).
 

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About

Kevin Cheng is a global nomad who's settled in San Francisco after calling Vancouver, Hong Kong, Austin and London his homes. Founder of Off Panel Productions and OK/Cancel. Director of Product Strategy at Raptr, a social network for gamers, and former designer of Pipes and Bravonation at Yahoo!. Presenter on numerous design subjects. Reachable at kc -at- this domain.

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