What about Monopoly?
I wrote a comic about Monopoly but didn’t mention Monopoly in the post. For those really into board games Monopoly has a bad reputation. The game does have a lot of problems that more modern games have alleviated. But it is partially unfair. It turns out that pretty much no one plays by the actual rules of the game! That whole “put the fines in the center and the next person who lands on Free Parking thing”…not in the rules. Most of the common house rules for Monopoly make the game last much much longer than it should. I’m sure a lot of these came about to alleviate one of the main problems with the game, early player elimination. It turns out it’s not much fun to play a game if you’re no longer playing. But if you embrace the theme of the game – vicious capitalism – and go by the actual rules, the game is actually OK. My son like to play and asks for it from time to time. It’s hard for me though. I have over 900 games and a lot of them are better than Monopoly, but I don’t mind playing from time to time. I’ll be moving Cory up to Settlers of Catan pretty soon which is more fun for everyone.
-mh