What are your favorite Monopoly house rules?

Question

We play Monopoly pretty frequently here at my house, and I'm looking for a couple possible alternate rules. We usually play that any of the tax money, or money paid from the community chest/chance cards goes onto free parking. Any other good variants?

Answer 1

My favorite was in college where we allow players to form corporations.

We start off with a dozen players. With that many players, within a few rounds all the properties are snapped up quick with most players having only a few properties and some with no properties.

The solution is to allow players to form binding corporations. Players with properties form the basis, then allow players with cash to buy shares. A quickly-formed and well financed corporation can build Hotels instantly. The Corporation might split rent when received, or retain earnings.

A player who has not bought into a corporation can be bankrupted quickly.

A player can sell their shares to someone else for any price negotiated.

Eventually the winner is when a single corporation exists, and the player with the most shares is declared the winner.

Answer 2

Our gaming group's tried several variants for Monopoly to address their chief concerns with the game (too much luck, not enough decision- making). Feel free to use or disregard them...

1) Always auction off properties - 90% of the time people buy properties when they land on them, so don't make it so easy on them. This allows for some strategic decisions... you can get any single property you want, even Boardwalk if you're willing to pay more then anyone else. We've also had people pay through the nose for a property they couldn't use just so someone else couldn't complete a monopoly.

2) Roll 2d6 or 1d12 on your turn - This gives you some control over your movement and gives you some more decisions to make. Unfortunately it does tend to lengthen the game a tad... you may want to make people pay a nominal fee like $25 in order to roll 1d12 to keep them from sitting there every turn thinking about what to roll. You also can't get doubles to move again on a 1d12, but if Boardwalk with a hotel on it is 6 to 8 spaces away I'm rolling a 1d12!

3) Can't collect money while in Jail - Keeps people from sneakily staying in Jail on purpose late in the game in order to avoid paying the big rents.

4) Time Limit - Whoever has the most assets (money + properties) after so much time, like 60, 90, or 120 minutes wins. Keeps games from going too long.

Answer 3

My FAVORITE Monopoly house rules are:
1. everytime everyone passes Go, put $500 in Free Parking. (This helps make sure that you get money everytime someone lands on it, but make sure that every now and then you have them trade in their 500's for 100's, 50's and 20's.)

2.No collecting money from Jail.

3. This one is my all time favorite: Immunity to rent. You could trade, let's say, Boardwalk and Immunity to rent for about $750. (That's just an example. Please DON'T do it.)

Answer 4

If you play frequently, you should probably try adding a couple games to your household rather than trying to improve a really old, clunky game (my apologies to Monopoly lovers, but it's true). You're really, really missing out if you haven't played some of the newer, smaller market games that have come out over the past few years. I recommend Settlers of Catan for a medium-weight game and Power Grid, Caylus or Puerto Rico for something meatier and longer, but you really can't go wrong with any of the games in the top 40 or 50 on the boardgamegeek.com game ranking list. They only get to the top by being voted on by other gamers. I know this answer isn't what you were asking for, but since you already obviously like to play games and have people to play with, I thought you might like to hear about some other alternatives.
P.S. unfortunately boardgamegeek is down right now so I can't give a link. :-(

Answer 5

When a player lands on Go, he can collect $400, instead of the $200 he would get if he just passed Go. This only comes into effect when the player has rolled the dice and landed on Go, not when he moves to Go because of a Communtiy Chest or Chance card!

Answer 6

When you're losing and have to sell property to the opposition,try and include an immunity, so that you can land on it free of charge for X amount of turns. Use counters to recognise how many 'lives' you have left.

You can also deal out properties to speed things up abit.

Answer 7

2 points

Answer 8

i play buy houses on any property even if you don't own all the same color tiles. it's crazy because if you put a hotel on just one space, and the person lands on it they pay all this money. the aticipation is exciting too. i think it makes it more exciting.