Dear Sir or Madam of Hasbro customer service. I am a member on a forum called TeamLiquid (http://www.teamliquid.net) and in a recent forum thread (http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=248123) the rules of monopoly emerged and of course being the internet, everyone had their own stand on the rules. So here is the problem. When you pick up a chance card with the "Advance token to the nearest Railroad and pay owner twice the rental to which he is otherwise entitles. If railroad is unowned, you may buy it from the bank." you can understand the task in two different ways:
1) This card requires the drawing player to advance to the railroad that is the fewest spaces from the plays. In other words if I land on the chance on a light blue street I must go around the board (and collect $200) to Reading Railroad which is 2 spaces behind where I drew the card.
2) The card requires the drawing player to advance to the railroad that is the fewest spaces in front of the player. So if I land on the chance on the same light blue street I advance eight spaces to Pennsylvania Railroad (and don't pass go).
At the moment alternative 2 is winnig with 88% of the votes.
In the forum thread there are quite a few good reasonings to both alternatives: "On a Monopoly board distance can only be measured going the correct way around the board, so Reading RR is actually 38 spaces away, not 2. That woud make it "nearest" (how could Pennsylvania be further, when you only have to move 8 spaces to get there?)."
"of course 1 is the correct reading. here's my thinking. the essential question is: "which railroad is 'the nearest'?" and there is no winning argument that a railroad 8 spots away from my piece is (ever) nearer to my piece than a railroad 2 spots away.
no, it's not dispositive that the card instructs you to "advance". it's common in Monopoly to advance all the way around the board to get to your destination (ever draw "advance to GO" from Blue Street chance spot? the rules specify that you must go all the way around the board, collecting $200). and as a general principle, directionality is generally irrelevant to nearness — especially on a flat game board where every move is instantaneous."
Could you experts of board games please enlighten us, experts of StarCraft2, on how the chance card should be interpreted.
Thank you for your help.
Best Regards
YES YES YES
This is amazingly lulz worthy!
Off-topic: I had 4 kinds of Monopoly boards: Snoopy, Star Wars, Regular and Pokemon. Pokemon had this great double-die thing where if you rolled 12, you could "battle" someone for their property if no buildings were on it.
Snake eyes meant teleport and double 3s meant pay everyone 50 and double 4s meant receive 50 for everyone.
Made the game really silly.
Also, JWD, you get last p.m about that private matter?
on the free parking in Monopoly,the way I and my friends/family play is that all taxes(super tax,income tax)payed in the game goes to the center of the board,and all that money collected up so far goes to the guy who lands on free parking.
On July 28 2011 02:27 BLinD-RawR wrote: on the free parking in Monopoly,the way I and my friends/family play is that all taxes(super tax,income tax)payed in the game goes to the center of the board,and all that money collected up so far goes to the guy who lands on free parking.
On July 28 2011 02:27 BLinD-RawR wrote: on the free parking in Monopoly,the way I and my friends/family play is that all taxes(super tax,income tax)payed in the game goes to the center of the board,and all that money collected up so far goes to the guy who lands on free parking.
its weird but thats the way I play it.
Makes going to Jail all the more worth it.
indeed.:p
I love rolling that clutch 10 going through all the pink and orange street(I call them sets) hotels and taking all of your tax money.
Hasbro email is gold. Thank you for that. Please return here with any response you get!
You guys bringing up "advance" are neglecting that (as explained in OP) under the "Reading RR" interpretation, you also advance--it's just that you have to advance all the way around the board. The issue is just which RR is "nearest"; does the fact that you have to advance to it impact on that issue?
Empyrean before you are convinced by the loop highway analogy read the discussion at the bottom of page 1
cheers everyone
P.S @ jon arbuckle: what's the thinking behind the "no building until all properties are sold" rule? Is it to prevent players from lucking/trading their way to a street well before everyone else, and scoring an easy win? The tradeoff is that eliminating the option to build means no choices between building early and conserving funds to snag up available properties.
Your entire argument is negligible of the direction of the board based on where you can see from an aerial view.
As I said before, if R.R. is nearest to you, as you advance forward Pens. Railroad becomes the closest, why do you ignore both the direction of the board by your aerial view, the ideas of "advancing" or moving forward and the change of what is the nearest.
By your fashion of thinking, you are changing the wording, you are looking for the nearest and then advancing instead of advancing and until you are at the nearest railroad.
Here's you: Where is the nearest -> Go there. Here's the card: Advance to the a railroad that is the nearest. Advance to the nearest -> railroad
Advance(nearest railroad).
The nearest railroad must be kept in association with advancing, if you can add the perspective that anything behind you is also the nearest then as you move forward, anything that gets closer to you can equally become the nearest.
On July 28 2011 02:34 JWD wrote: P.S @ jon arbuckle: what's the thinking behind the "no building until all properties are sold" rule? Is it to prevent players from lucking/trading their way to a street well before everyone else, and scoring an easy win? The tradeoff is that eliminating the option to build means no choices between building early and conserving funds to snag up available properties.
Yes, basically. The speed die changes everything.
That tradeoff doesn't matter with the speed die because the rulebook stipulates you start with two or three extra $500 bills (I forget). You have enough money to buy whatever you can, and once all the property is bought up, trade negotiations begin in full. If you blew most of your money on property, you can trade for cash from others players (and the more property you have, the easier trade negotiations will go for you).
With Mr. Monopoly on the speed die, in a three or four player game, the gap between the haves and have-nots can be enormous.
Quick explanation of the speed die: - you start with extra money when using the speed die; - the die's sides are thus: 1, 2, 3, bus, Mr. Monopoly, Mr. Monopoly; - the die is only used after the first trip around the board (jail does not count); - the numbers are added to your other two dice for your move and are not considered as part of a double (where you roll again); - three-of-a-kind means you move to anywhere you wish on the board, with no second roll; - the bus means you can choose to move the distance for one of either white die or both together (e.g. I could move 5, 6, or 11 spaces); - Mr. Monopoly means you move to the next available (i.e. unowned) property, or if no property is available, the next property not owned by you.
So, for example, in the early game, only Illinois and Oriental remain unowned, and I land on Illinois with Mr. Monopoly, I can buy Illinois, move past GO, collect $200, and then buy Oriental.
As another example, I land on Illinois, which I do not own and on which there is a hotel, but I own everything between it and Park Place, which also has a hotel, with Mr. Monopoly, then I pay rent on Illinois and then move to Park Place where I pay rent again.
Last example, two players of four have gone bankrupt to me, leaving one player left. He has the Orange monopoly developed, ghetto (Baltic/Medi.) monopoly developed, and the Railroads. I own everything else on the board, approximately half of which is mortgaged. The rest has modest developments (hotels to 3 houses). I am so, so fucked.
Taragana Pyjarama EP is amazing, highly recommended. The first song is just great and has a sort of soft noise style. Think of crystal castles but sedatives instead of cocaine.
I've been following these recently, and even though this guy's personal commentary always comes across sounding like his nose is pointed up, I gotta admit the potpourri section always has cool things to know about.
On July 28 2011 02:34 JWD wrote: Hasbro email is gold. Thank you for that. Please return here with any response you get!
You guys bringing up "advance" are neglecting that (as explained in OP) under the "Reading RR" interpretation, you also advance--it's just that you have to advance all the way around the board. The issue is just which RR is "nearest"; does the fact that you have to advance to it impact on that issue?
Empyrean before you are convinced by the loop highway analogy read the discussion at the bottom of page 1
cheers everyone
P.S @ jon arbuckle: what's the thinking behind the "no building until all properties are sold" rule? Is it to prevent players from lucking/trading their way to a street well before everyone else, and scoring an easy win? The tradeoff is that eliminating the option to build means no choices between building early and conserving funds to snag up available properties.
Well to me it should end with just saying that the designers never intended it to be a windfall for the player to go around the board passing go... However just for the sake of entertaining the other argument...
I just find it strange to interpret the RR right behind you as the nearest if in order to advance to it you have to past by all three of the other RR. The mosquito might be closer, physically, but you then proceeded to run way past the one 20 miles away and around the world to get to it. When someone just asked you to go to the nearest stop. Which is probably how they should have worded it... We could look at Chance cards in other languages. A french version might have a translation with better wording.
It's a wording thing... It just strikes me as one of those arguments you would conveniently get into when someone other than you owns Pennsylvania. *Shrug*
If you are advancing, the question is, does it mean the nearest railroad to your current position, or the nearest railroad in your line of travel (forward) ?
I'd say that Penn would be "nearest" as you will reach it first in the direction you are advancing. Reading would be furthest, as you are traveling the most distance to reach it out of any railroad, even though you are technically close to it. But I don't think that matters, personally. In the direction you are advancing, it's not very near at all. When confined to the rules of the card, backwards doesn't even exist, and it is impossible to travel in that direction. So by the card's sense of reality, since backwards doesn't exist, then Reading isn't near to you at all. Once you start advancing, the first railroad you see would be Penn, and therefore that is the nearest railroad.
Me my friends and my family have played too much Monopoly. We always knew about the auction rule and I disagree with the article stating that the rule adds any level of excitement or emotion to the game.
When you use the auction rule, at first there is an illusion of eliminating randomness and replacing it with player interaction but the truth is after you play enough games (like we have) you realize that no matter what property you land on you HAVE to buy it. You have enough money to buy everything you land on and pay all the debts the first ~10 turns. The 200 from Go is more than enough to pay any debts before houses hit the board and your initial money is going to last until you buy enough stuff that you can start to make deals. People tend to forget that Monopoly is a game of assets not cash. You can be on $40 or $2k when the game reaches the late stage if you land on 2 hotels in one round you are toast. The real purpose of the game is getting yourself in the best position you can with the initial properties you get. If that means buying a piece of a set just so your opponent can't then so be it. Just don't buy utilities and hope you land on as many properties as possible.
In my opinion thou the auction rule not being used is just people not reading the instructions the 2 rules that have caused a LOT of fights for me are players not being able to loan money and what constitutes a loan and second what to do with the stuff of a player that gets knocked out. If you knock out a player and that player wants to be an asshole to everyone else that could mean you basically instawinning the game which sucks for someone else if they clearly had a better shot at winning.
I could talk a little more about monopoly but honestly this is making me look crazy enough. But seriously try it next game. Buy everything you land on and tell me how it goes.
Also regarding the "nearest railroad" issue like someone else posted the videogame version of monopoly would move you to Penn. And the travel version that you could only move pieces with a little turn thingy only allowed you to move forward. Like I said I've played this game way too much.
JWD much <3 as always and please don't take so long to post this blogs. Your style piece is always on point, I remember reading about the unbuttoned collar look a while back in another fashion blog. looks great with the ties and of course this will probably take me a couple of days to go over everything but that's why I love this so much.
P.S. Risk is the best of the "simple" board games.
EPT
