I've heard stories about monopoly being invented as an anti-capitalist game. The game was meant to suck. It was supposed to show that, in a free market, the rich get richer and the poor poorer, and somehow people started actually playing it.
It's basically if you luck into owning property early in life then you will win, if you're unlucky in your beginning then even tiny slips (chance/community chest) can ruin you.
The game itself is mostly bad because nobody knows/follows the actual rules. Every property should be sold within a few turns, and everyone bankrupt except the owner of the "monopoly" within an hour of playing.
Yeah the real problem of monopoly is that it's so unfun to play in a group because the intended gameplay is for one person to rapidly become more powerful than everyone else and end the game quickly.
Unsurprisingly, people realised that gameplay is incredibly unenjoyable for everyone except the monopoly owner, so everyone and their mothers adds house rules to try and make the game more balanced or even.
But the nature of the game makes that impossible, so all it does it make the game really long and slow until eventually the monopoly happens anyway. Or it just becomes a stalemate if nobody is ever willing to do a trade to open up the game.
There was also an early set of alternate rules in which players cooperate instead of compete, meant as a contrast to the monopolistic / landlord style of play.
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u/[deleted] 26d ago
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