The Property Game Ends Before Midnight
Everyone knows the game: you roll two dice, move around a square of streets, buy the ones you land on, build houses, charge rent, and go bankrupt or make everyone else do so. Everyone also knows it takes four hours and ends with two players grinding each other down while the others make tea. We had not played it in a year for that reason. Tonight we tried it with house rules written down in advance, and it finished in an hour and thirty-five minutes with a clear winner and no sulking, which may be a first.
The rules, all agreed before the first roll:
- No money on the free corner square. It is just a square. Most of the game’s length comes from cash being pumped in by this invented jackpot.
- Any property a player lands on and declines to buy is auctioned immediately to all players, starting at nothing. This is in the printed rules and nobody uses it.
- No loans, no deals involving future favors, no immunity from rent. Trades are property for property or property for cash, settled on the spot.
- A 90-minute timer. When it rings, finish the round, then total cash plus printed property values plus half the cost of buildings. Highest total wins.
The auction rule changed everything. Properties went for well above face value in the first twenty minutes as players fought for the color groups, which meant cash ran short early, which meant houses came late, which meant the first bankruptcy did not happen until minute 70 and the timer ended it before the grind could start. Final totals were in the region of 4,100, 3,650, 2,200 and a bankruptcy, and the winner was the player who bought nothing in the first lap and spent everything at auction in the second.
Two things to adjust. The timer should perhaps be 100 minutes, because the last ten were a little rushed. And the auction starting at nothing favors whoever has cash on the turn, so the player who had just paid a big rent felt hard done by twice. We may start auctions at half face value next time. The game is still not anybody’s favorite, but it is now a game rather than a siege, and the box has come down off the top of the wardrobe.