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The Landlord's Game

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Re: The Landlord's Game

#151

Post by JeremyNT »

throwawayay02 wrote: post #62
lordnacho wrote: post #52

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?

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

The thing is, it's not usually such a zero-sum game as it is in Monopoly.

In better designed games, there's more opportunity cost associated when you start optimizing for something. Individual players can pursue their own, different strategies. A player who optimizes for "strategy A" might be weak to "strategy B." Getting the resources for "strategy B" might become easier, since there's less competition for them.

The trick to Monopoly is that there is no alternate strategy. Opting to (or being unable to) buy land doesn't open up some other path through which you can win - it just means you're going to lose.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#152

Post by banannaise »

impendia wrote: post #135
ryanbrunner wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is essential to a competitive game that everyone try their best in that specific instance of the game. Depending on the player, this could mean "go all-out to win" or "place as highly as possible" or "come as close to winning as possible" or even "score as many points as possible". All of those are reasonable. Playing for things external to the game is a problem.

There tend to be three kinds of kingmaking: revenge, social dynamics, and wanting to leave. All of them have something in common: they are done for reasons outside the gamespace. They're violating the boundaries of the game.

Revenge (what you did) is out-of-bounds because it's using the game to win future games rather than playing the current one.

Social dynamics and wanting to leave are out-of-bounds because they're using the game for rewards that have nothing to do with the game.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#153

Post by banannaise »

PMunch wrote: post #98
heja2009 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is even pretty much a design principle for newer board games [1]. It started to become popular with games like Settlers of Catan. [1] https://boardgamedesigncourse.com/making-a-comeback/

What is the mechanic in Settlers that enables this? Can't think of anything apart from how resources seems to be unevenly used throughout the game (wood and brick being more sought after early on to build roads and settlements, while iron and grain become more important when cities are built later on).

Catan is a poor example, because there is no built-in mechanic. Player interaction allows for targeting leaders and making mutually beneficial moves with people who are trailing. For everything great about Catan, it's a pretty old Eurogame, and it lacks a lot of refinements to the genre that have been made since.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#154

Post by outworlder »

banannaise wrote: post #153
PMunch wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the mechanic in Settlers that enables this? Can't think of anything apart from how resources seems to be unevenly used throughout the game (wood and brick being more sought after early on to build roads and settlements, while iron and grain become more important when cities are built later on).

Catan is a poor example, because there is no built-in mechanic. Player interaction allows for targeting leaders and making mutually beneficial moves with people who are trailing. For everything great about Catan, it's a pretty old Eurogame, and it lacks a lot of refinements to the genre that have been made since.

Do you have some examples of newer games that are more refined?

Re: The Landlord's Game

#155

Post by shoemakersteve »

kqr wrote: post #132
PMunch wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think I remember reading about this and IIRC one of the players was given more starting money than the rest, but wasn't told about it. Then when they were asked why they think they won, they would say it was because of their strategy or their skill, and I think most even doubled down when they were told about the extra money. Something along those lines. My memory is likely inaccurate as well.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#156

Post by WorldMaker »

danShumway wrote: post #142
lordnacho wrote: post #52

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…

> Perhaps the most intrigueing meta observation of the monopoly game is how the players seem to never recognise how it is rigged I don't want to start a big argument, because I realize some people actually do like Monopoly as an artistic statement, but I've always felt that if a game is actually that universally misunderstood, it's not because it's brilliant -- it's because it's bad at demonstrating its core point. O…

To be fair, the history of capitalist owners of Monopoly have had reason to "dull" the original design. The Landlord's Game included two rule sets and encouraged players to play both then compare/contrast. The second Georgist rule set hasn't been included in the official rulebook in decades, but was a key part of the original design. (It's intentionally dull to play the other rules, but it was the stark contrast that was a key part of its attempt to be a teaching tool.)

There's also been another force "dulling" Monopoly's game design over time: most people don't learn Monopoly from the rules, they learn Monopoly from playing with others. There are a lot of viral (mimetic) multi-generation "house rules" that people learn from their families/peers/educators. There's also a couple of key clear rules that remain in the rulebook that people don't follow for a number of reasons, including essentially culturally "we forgot them".

(There's some interesting meta-commentary on Capitalism and its attempts at "fairness" band aids in the house rule dialects that have accumulated over time. There's some interesting meta-commentary on Capitalism regulations, banking, and/or dumb luck in the rules that have been "forgotten".)

In some ways, some of the almost willful cultural ignorance of the message of Monopoly is its own ironic statement on the systemic problems of Capitalism and how much people complicit in that system want to wish things fair or ignore their complicity and try to just cope with the problems and their fallout. I wouldn't necessarily call that "universally misunderstood", that's a pretty deep understanding, even if accidental. It's generally surprisingly easy to have conversations about it and "wake" people to Monopoly's origins and what it says about the game (and why they love/hate it) because even if they never thought "huh there are interesting parallels to real world Capitalism here" they can definitely see the parallels in hindsight if you want to talk about it.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#157

Post by WorldMaker »

mod wrote: post #146
fouronnes3 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting idea. I've had fun playing with another twist. Follow the rules strictly but start with 1/3 the usual starting money.

Sounds like this would just extend the period where people have to get lucky to gain an advantage. So it would appear more even for a longer time. (I do agree that would be more fun)

Not necessarily if you follow the "all land must sell on first landing" rule that is often forgotten. (After landing on an unowned square, if you refuse to buy at list price, it must go to auction by the bank [with the bank still collecting the funds].) A smaller starting money supply potentially forces fewer "at list price" purchases and shrewder auction house strategies potentially advantaging auction house strategy over luck of landing on a square and getting that first refusal.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#158

Post by dragonwriter »

flower-giraffe wrote: post #38
mjevans wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short version: You're _supposed_ to strictly follow the rules AND the lack of pieces. Depleting the bank of houses to upgrade property with as a market cornering tactic. IRL similar to urban growth boundaries and no programs for upgrading the housing within them.

A very interesting twist is to play with real money. Set a sensible exchange rate to real money and treat the Monopoly money as “chips”. The tactics and strategy significantly change because there is real external value to the assets and currency - but only for the duration of the game. Apart from anything else it means the game ends much faster.

> Set a sensible exchange rate to real money and treat the Monopoly money as “chips”.

Monopoly being not zero sum among the players makes that...interesting. As well as transfers from losing players to the winner, there is also potential for net transfer to or from the bank. How do you handle that?

Re: The Landlord's Game

#159

Post by dragonwriter »

kqr wrote: post #128
impendia wrote: post #105

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…

> Assuming your Monopoly house rules allow arbitrary contracts

IIRC, you don’t need house rules for that, so long as “arbitrary contracts” covers future commitments for things otherwise legal to exchange (you do need house rules for such contracts to be self-enforcing, though.)

Re: The Landlord's Game

#160

Post by dragonwriter »

banannaise wrote: post #152
impendia wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is essential to a competitive game that everyone try their best in that specific instance of the game . Depending on the player, this could mean "go all-out to win" or "place as highly as possible" or "come as close to winning as possible" or even "score as many points as possible". All of those are reasonable. Playing for things external to the game is a problem. There tend to be three kinds of kingmaking: reveng…

> It is essential to a competitive game that everyone try their best in that specific instance of the game.

No, its not.

It is, of course, more desirable from the perspective of people who prefer that style of play that others conform to it, but it is in no way “essential”.

It may be beneficial to mutual enjoyment to have table agreement on metagame issues like this in advance (OTOH, one might do well to recognise the inherent incentive structure toward the metagame approach you decry in games which tend to produce a long, lingering defeat with no reasonable route to victory.)

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