Free Parking

Scott Hardie | October 31, 2007
Survey time. This may start a fight; I hope not.

Monopoly: As you play, do you place all money due to the bank into the center of the board, and hand it out to whoever lands on Free Parking?

Risk: When someone defeats an opponent's last army, do you let them claim all of that opponent's cards? This is part of the rules, but it creates a lottery situation like Free Parking does.

Scott Hardie | October 31, 2007
Also on my mind: Kevin Fiore, Matthew Preston and I have been playing games at warfish.net, a Risk simulator with many configurable options and lots of user-created maps to play. It's a lot of fun. We'd love to have you join us, so please speak up if you're interested and I'll have Kevin send you a game invitation. It's a private site so don't fret about spam.

Aaron Shurtleff | October 31, 2007
I never used to play with that Monopoly rule, but I was introduced to it in Pennsylvania, and I've always played using it since then. I don't know that it adds that much to the game (unless you end up paying the bank a lot of money in the course of a game), but I enjoy the added little bonus you get from it.

I haven't played Risk in so long, I can't recall that one. I was so bad at Risk that I probably never benefitted from it anyways. :) All I recall is fondly holding Australia for the whole game once because I piled all my armies in the one spot you could enter it from, and no one could oust me until the rest of the world was taken over, and he could consolidate his whole army to take me out. :) Good times!

Amy Austin | October 31, 2007
It's not a legitimate rule, and I don't know who ever made it up, but...

Of course! we always play that way ("we" being whomever I happen to be playing with at the time) -- who doesn't... and who doesn't like free money! Even though it's a totally unwritten improvisation on the rules, I think that the people who play that way far outnumber those who don't. In fact... I'm wondering how many players even know that it *isn't* an official rule but have just blithely followed along with whatever joker was stating the rules for all those years... ;-D

Scott Hardie | November 1, 2007
I've always been opposed to both options, personally. I try to play both games as contests of skill, and when someone wins the lottery like that and has a free ticket to victory, what's the point? The thing that I've only recently begun to understand is that some people play those games for fun, duh. It's lonely being in the game-of-skill camp.

As a teetotaler, I've been the only sober person at a party where people agreed to play Monopoly for real and the game gradually devolved into chaos. You'd think it would be fun to deceive drunk people into losing or playing badly, but it's boring, and besides, there's no challenge or skill in it. Someday, at last, I would like to play a real game of Monopoly through from start to finish, and if I ever do, I will relish it as a unique event, because there's way it'll ever happen twice.

Denise Sawicki | November 1, 2007
I don't play those particular games so I'm incapable of being on topic (as usual) but I gotta say, it actually kind of irritates me that nobody ever wants to do anything for fun! Everything has to be this huge, professional test of skill. Darrell tried to get into Frisbee golf for a while recently but nobody wants to have fun at it, it is this huge macho posing thing. He brought our dog Philip to the park with him to practice Frisbee golf and some people made nasty comments about it because the dog made him look like a non-serious player or something. Philip wasn't in their way or anything. Also we we got Philip enrolled in agility class. It is fun so far, but everyone is so ultra-serious about it that I'm not sure how long we can continue. I think we might be the only people in the class who don't own multiple championship dogs. Everything has to be some elite club, if you're not the absolute best in the world you're encouraged not to even try... Like I think Darrell's an amazing guitar player but apparently he's nowhere near good enough, there's always someone who can play faster... Never mind that blazing guitar solos irritate the crap out of me, I'd rather hear melodies, but that's not what most people want...

Aaron Shurtleff | November 1, 2007
Denise, that's one of the huge benefits to adult kickball. We honestly don't care who wins or loses (ok, maybe a little), just as long as everyone is having fun. We wear costumes sometimes, and it's all about the non-serious stuff. I don't know if they have such craziness up where you are (but they might) and I don't know if kickball is your thing, but I think there's probably got to be some recreational sports out there that are all about having fun and not being super competitive.

Although, I am guilty of that with Scrabble. I can't play that game for fun, it's all about winning for me (which is sad, because I'm not super great at it!) :)

Denise Sawicki | November 1, 2007
Hmmm... I don't know if I could ever get over the residual terror of gym class enough to enjoy any kind of team sport :-P. I'm the person who was so dazed by all the confusing action in a basketball game that I would somehow wind up standing under the basket and getting hit in the head when the ball comes through. This happened more than once...

Aaron Shurtleff | November 1, 2007
Yeah, basketball is a tough sport though. I always got confused with switching baskets at half time, and I would put the ball in the wrong basket. That'll make you an outcast pretty quickly! :)