Live data from Hacker News

The Landlord's Game

en.wikipedia.org

131–140 of 170 posts

Re: The Landlord's Game

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the most intrigueing meta observation of the monopoly game is how the players seem to never recognise how it is rigged, at least years of playing it with my cousins never revealed the didactic purpose to any of us. When we played people always took it seriously, ie that there are smart things you can do and you should do them, but we never stepped back and pointed out how the rules made the losers more and mo…

Is there a board game where one's advantage doesn't compound, though?

Dominion is a great example of this. For most games (depending on which cards are played there may be differing victory conditions) the way you win the game is by obtaining Province cards and adding them to your deck. These are worth a lot of points, but have no actual utility in the game (where most of the cards you are adding to your deck let you do things like draw more cards or gain resources). So as you get closer to winning, the composition of your deck becomes worse and worse, and you become less and less likely to be able to purchase more Provinces.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#132
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It leaves out an important piece though, inheritance. No way for you to win if there’s another player who inherits a small fortune of existing properties on the board.

Imagine playing Monopoly but one player starts with a couple properties and a little extra cash in hand. As if that game wasn't bad enough as it is.

They've actually done that in a psychology study. As in real life, the people with the advantage start inventing reasons why they deserved that advantage, and that it's really fair.

My memory might be inaccurate.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Adam Smith complained about landlords though.

Adam Smith also wanted inheritance mostly abolished except for the small amount necessary to continue supporting a man's wife and young children.

Something a lot of commenters seem to be missing is that in Adam Smith's time, inheritance meant primogeniture. In other words, the eldest son receives all land, which is indivisible and belongs to the eldest son only. (Who is socially obliged to support the other people in the family as needed.)

This ties up a lot of wealth in ways which slow down economic growth immensely.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#134
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A countervailing pattern I've seen (in games with 3+ players) is that, if one player pulls into a lead, then the other players will start piling on them. Board games like Avalon Hill Civilization, Family Business, Root, etc. -- basically any game where you can choose one of your rivals to attack. Munchkin takes this to the extreme, where someone will perpetually be on the edge of winning and there are a variety of co…

Assuming your Monopoly house rules allow arbitrary contracts (if they don't, they should) the non-winning players can extend credit to each other, and allocate their combined resources very efficiently to try to beat the winner. It's very hard as a single player to beat a credit union. So the winning player will want to build some sort of alliance with at least some of the losers to make their coalition weaker, which…

Interesting. Sounds like I should find some people to play a game of Monopoly with!

The game seems to have earned a bad reputation, the prototype for the sort of game you shouldn't play anymore because everything from the last 25 years is better. I'm not sure this is deserved, but realistically my copy will probably end up collecting dust. After reading your comment, I hope not!

Re: The Landlord's Game

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A countervailing pattern I've seen (in games with 3+ players) is that, if one player pulls into a lead, then the other players will start piling on them. Board games like Avalon Hill Civilization, Family Business, Root, etc. -- basically any game where you can choose one of your rivals to attack. Munchkin takes this to the extreme, where someone will perpetually be on the edge of winning and there are a variety of co…

Taken to an extreme, this has a 'kingmakeer' problem though, where who wins the game can often be decided by someone who has no realistic chance of winning (either by directly aiding or allying with one player, or failing to block another player).

I agree, but I wouldn't always characterize this as a problem.

I remember playing a 3-player game of Root (which I highly recommend!) Player A ambushed me and managed to burn down my headquarters. At that point I realized I couldn't win, and I spent the rest of the game attacking A.

A complained that I was just throwing the game to B, which is exactly what happened. The kingmaker problem made A's decision into a huge blunder. If you don't pay attention to psychology in these games, you will lose.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the most intrigueing meta observation of the monopoly game is how the players seem to never recognise how it is rigged, at least years of playing it with my cousins never revealed the didactic purpose to any of us. When we played people always took it seriously, ie that there are smart things you can do and you should do them, but we never stepped back and pointed out how the rules made the losers more and mo…

Is there a board game where one's advantage doesn't compound, though?

Yes. As others have pointed out, it’s more and more common these days - or at least more common to have a situation where the players aren’t entirely sure who is ahead.

Examples include: * Innovation * Wingspan * 7 Wonders * Brass: Birmingham (and the original Brass, too)

All really fun games, too.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#137
post #3

There's also https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-landlords-game/ (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10685690 , but no discussion there)

Under the Boardwalk: The Monopoly Story is a fun documentary that talks about origin of the game, including The Landlord’s Game, and also includes a fair amount of coverage of a national and international tournament.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1250861/

I would have liked it to dwell more on the roots and the meta-level of what the game is trying to say, and how that seems to be missed by most people who play it. But was still a fun watch on a lazy weekend day.

Streaming free on Amazon Prime right now: https://watch.amazon.com/detail?gti=amzn1.dv.gti.1cad6f64-66...

Re: The Landlord's Game

#138
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your cabbie understands BTC you might have a point. We aren't even close to there yet

>the usual rule is that if your cabbie starts talking about it, it's time to get out of the market. >If your cabbie understands BTC you might have a point. We aren't even close to there yet The point is that the cabbie likely doesn't understand BTC. When an asset class becomes so popular that people who have no idea how it works are putting money into it and loudly campaigning for others to do the same that is a sign…

"When an asset class becomes so popular that people who have no idea how it works are putting money into it and loudly campaigning for others to do the same that is a sign that you are in a bubble."

It absolutely isn't a sign a of a bubble. There aren't many people that understand what they are investing in be it currency or Google. The success of the investment has nothing to do with the cabbies understanding. Taking his advice does.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#139

Every time this comes up I wonder whether the Landlord's Game can be played with a regular Monopoly set. Is it just the rules that have changed, or did the original game also contain different pieces/cards?

Yes, I wonder the same... The wikipedia article points to landlordsgame.info. Thereyou can also see a picture with all the cards and chips that came with it. It seems a lot. But there is no complete, printable copy of them: http://landlordsgame.info/games/lg-1906/images/lg-1906_egc-p...

Re: The Landlord's Game

#140

Every time this comes up I wonder whether the Landlord's Game can be played with a regular Monopoly set. Is it just the rules that have changed, or did the original game also contain different pieces/cards?

Yes, I wonder the same... The wikipedia article points to landlordsgame.info. Thereyou can also see a picture with all the cards and chips that came with it. It seems a lot. But there is no complete, printable copy of them: http://landlordsgame.info/games/lg-1906/images/lg-1906_egc-p...

And I found this: https://thelandlordgame.com/index.html

Seems to be based on it. Don't know how closely it relates but it is CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 licensed and you can just download it.

Post reply on HN