 Every characteristic, good and bad, comes out in a Monopoly game.
You will learn about their business acumen, their patience, their
compassion, their tolerance level and their favorite color. I like
the reds... and I'm always the iron. Ironic, since I hate ironing.
Ironic, too, that "ironic" starts with "iron."I've known people
who consistently buy Baltic and Mediterranean avenues, not because
they are the best deal, or they like the color, but because they
like the location: immediately after passing GO. You get your $200
paycheck and then you go home to your low-rent apartment. Of course,
buying these two properties and charging a measly $2 for rent means,
in essence, that you are a slumlord. The houses you buy are actually
shacks and the hotels are tenement housing.
You have to use your imagination, here. Just because the green
and red cubes are the same ones you'd buy for Park Place, they cost
less than a quarter of the price. That spells ghetto in any
language.
Then you have the payers who dream of being so rich that luxury
tax is just petty cash. I've always wondered why the luxury tax was
paid by all passers-by and not just the people who buy luxurious
things: like the whole block of green and medium blue properties.
Of course, passers-by would much rather land on Luxury Tax and
gladly pay the $75 than land on Pennsylvania Avenue with a hotel.
I know people who want to be railroad barons because they don't
want to figure the math on houses and hotels. These fanatics would
trade Ventura Avenue and Indiana Avenue just to get Reading
Railroad. If you're the one who owns the other red and yellow
properties, the railroad cartel people are your best friends.
Still they don't make sense to me. Unlike other properties, every
time you collect another railroad, your income goes up. But even if
you get all four railroads, you still only get the equivalent of
passing GO. Many of these demented railroad barons think that if
they own all the railroads, they have a safe place to go when the
hotels go up -- as if they will ever land on them again the entire
game.
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 If you land on a utility that someone else owns, you have to roll
the dice to see what you owe. Shouldn't that be connected to how
many houses you own? My electric bill is not a big surprise for me.
It's not a gamble, a roll of the dice. My water bill is only a
surprise when someone forgot to turn the garden hose off for a
couple of weeks. That could be considered a roll of the dice, I
suppose.
Some players only want the properties that are mentioned on the
Chance and Community Chest cards. They want to be the harbinger of
doom for anyone who manages to tiptoe through all the hotel-ridden
properties only to pick a card that sends the hapless traveler
straight to St. Charles place with two hotels. Own it!
People like playing Monopoly because it gives us a feel for being
high rollers with big bucks without risking anything. It's an
approximation of real estate deals in a 1901 economy, except for one
thing. When one runs out of money and can't pay the rent, there
should be a "check's in the mail" feature. This feature would
include at least four or five rounds to evict a tenant who cannot
pay.
To update the game to this millennium, they also need to include
a Community Chest card that says "Government Stimulus Package." It
doesn't do anything for anybody in real estate, but the bank won't
let you buy more property unless you provide them with your
firstborn son.
[By LAURA SNYDER]
Laura Snyder is a nationally syndicated columnist,
author and speaker. You can reach her at
lsnyder@lauraonlife.com
or visit www.lauraonlife.com
for more info. |
