[quote name=\'Adam Nedeff\' date=\'Jan 27 2006, 12:22 PM\']I guess it's true what they say...
Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.[snapback]108843[/snapback]
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I dunno if I should be ashamed or proud to say that I own a Monopoly Playmaster.
It really wasn't that bad, if you took the time to learn how the interface worked. (Unsurprisingly, it was a lot easier than the linked review, which was clearly making more effort to be funny than it was to disburse actual information, made it out to be.) Most of the things the Playmaster did were designed to get the properties out to the players faster (via random forced auctions, instead of waiting a billion extra turns for someone to FINALLY make the roll that lands on Tennessee Avenue and unlocks the game), then to get the properties turned into Monopolies faster (via Buybacks, which bought up unmatched color groups and then auctioned them off as a set), and finally to encourage players to get themselves deeper into debt faster (via Loans, which allowed you to take out a loan against a Monopoly (different than a mortgage, as you can't build on a property when it's mortgaged), and was called in randomly after a certain time period), which would then create bankruptcies sooner, thereby speeding up the game. In doing this it made the game more random, which might bother some people, but if you're playing Monopoly in the first place you obviously don't care about that anyhow.
The main reason it failed was because very few people play Monopoly by the rules in the box...most people (including myself, at the time) use house rules (the Free Parking jackpot, double salary if you land on Go exactly, etc.) that artificially infuse more money into the game, which totally breaks all of the game enhancements that I've outlined above. So nobody Got It. (And, as a result, nobody bought it.) And it took the dice out of your hand. People like rolling dice.
The knocks on Monopoly are threefold: it's too random, it's too political, and it's too long. The first two are very legitimate complaints (and are the main reasons why Monopoly is so reviled among serious gamers), but the third one really isn't...when I've played following the letter of the rules in the box, you can get through a game in under 2 hours.
