Thread: Re: English/American rules?

tool — 2008-02-25T14:57:46+00:00

We do not as a general rule allow scans of published rules to be posted. Someone might e-mail them to you, but otherwise your best bet is to e-mail Hasbro UK and see if they can send them to you (the game was not released in the US).

Thread: English/American rules?

magocharlie — 2008-02-25T11:01:28+00:00

Hi,
can someone post here or in the File section the english or american rules?
I have the netherland version(it was a gift from my friends), and i don't know how to use the computer...Thank you!

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joshie — 2007-09-13T05:32:46+00:00

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joshie — 2007-09-13T05:32:26+00:00

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joshie — 2007-09-13T05:32:07+00:00

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joshie — 2007-09-13T05:31:34+00:00

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joshie — 2007-09-13T05:31:15+00:00

the board

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arnaudel — 2007-03-08T21:57:58+00:00

French Edition - Back

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arnaudel — 2007-03-08T21:56:59+00:00

French edition

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Kortatu — 2006-07-10T18:53:37+00:00

Spanish version computer

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Kortatu — 2006-07-10T18:45:01+00:00

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Der Das — 2005-02-14T02:47:40+00:00

Dutch version box.

Thread: Session Report

DangerMouse — 2002-03-11T22:29:56+00:00

Monopoly – Stock Exchange: James, Dan, Bob, Bill, Matt and Mark

A quick summary would be that Bill hated it (but Bill hates standard Monopoly also), the rest of us were intrigued, but the hand held console that you use to make purchases, etc. is a liability.

The learning curve is fairly easy; if you know how to play Monopoly you know how to play Monopoly – Stock Exchange (M-SE from now on). The real twist here is that instead of buying properties outright you buy stocks in properties. The first person to land on a given “company” (property) can “float” the company by buying 5 shares (out of the 9 available). That person becomes the “president” of the company. As long as he maintains a simple majority in stock he will retain presidency. If a player has presidency in all the companies of a given group/color he has formed a monopoly. With a monopoly the president is allowed to purchase offices/head offices (houses/hotels). Pretty familiar stuff.

The other twist is that when you land on a property you pay rent to the bank, not any player. That’s because the rent collected by a company is divvied up among all the shareholders. When you pass “Go” you collect $200 plus all the “dividends” from rent collected on properties where you own stock. When you land on a company where you are the president you don’t pay rent, if you just own a few shares in it you pay a less rent than someone who has no shares in the company.

I forget what they’re called in M-SE, but railroads and utilities are the same as they were in standard Monopoly, except a bit more lucrative in terms of the railroads. When you land on them you pay the owner the rent directly, there are no shares involved.

So on your turn, you roll the dice and move your token. Land on an unowned company and you can float it and become president. Land on a floated company and you pay rent to the bank. Land on a utility or railroad pay the owner the rent or buy the property. If you didn’t buy any railroad/utility, or float a company you can buy 1 share in any company on the board OR buy 2 shares in the company you’re currently sitting on. There’s also “Bull” and “Bear” spaces (Community Chest/Chance), plus taxes, free parking and jail like before. Bull cards are generally good, Bear cards bad. They are a lot different than Community Chest/Chance.

So, all in all, much of the feel of the original Monopoly is there. You’re trying to acquire monopolies in order to build houses, etc. The shares add a layer of granularity that took us a while to get used to and by game’s end (Dan had to leave a bit earlier than usual) we were just starting to see the possibilities. Like Matt’s suggestion of buying a share of a company which collected good rent right before passing Go. That’ll give you a share of the dividends. Also, as a shareholder you *want* the president to put up offices and collect good rent on a monopoly. So even though there were opportunities to steal away a presidency they were usually bypassed so a monopoly wouldn’t be broken. Of course that would change depending on the game situation. And because you have all these shares in various properties you have a lot of assets you can liquidate when you need money for buying offices and stuff or paying rent. The trading element is that much more involved because now the share values of companies have to be taken into account.

Speaking of share values they vary by some random amount and are based on the original price of the company, how many other player’s have bought shares of the company as well as how many times they collect rent(???). We were never quite sure of that last part. A weirdness we never got used to is that when someone asked what company shares were going for I would quote the price shown on the “market” screen as the current value. When they went to buy the shares the price would get jacked up some considerable amount *because they were buying it*. So the act of buying would drive up the share price *before* the purchase, unlike most any other game I can think of where stocks are bought and sold.

But the real problem is that the little game console is where all the share holdings, share prices, dividends, etc. are tracked. The game suggests that one person do the data entry during the game. The problem with that is everyone else wants and needs to know a lot of info at any given moment. Like, which shares are available for sale, what are the current values of x company’s shares, how many shares does so and so own in x company, etc, etc. So one guy is trying to answer a lot of questions at once, effectively making his game play suffer, and everyone else can’t really get a feel for what is going on. You can see who is president of what company (the company president/title cards are passed out) and you can see the offices on the board, but beyond that you’re blind.

Also, since all the transactions of shares must be fed into the console the trading sessions can be a bit of a pain. There’s a lot of data entry to handle a swap of 3 or 4 presidencies. And like I said we didn’t really hit the nuances of the playing with the shares. I can see where the share trading could get quite complex.

All of this leads to a considerable amount of downtime for everyone involved (except for the harried data entry guy). A possible solution would be to have everyone do their own data entry during the game. So the console would be passed from player to player for their turn. This would allow the current player to see what was going on and make more informed choices and it would take the burden off any single data entry guy. The problem with that, although somewhat minor, is everyone would have to become familiar with the console and how to key in transactions. It’s pretty easy but it takes some getting used to, by the end of the game I was cruising with it. We even thought about having multiple consoles involved so that it’d be easier for people to see what was going on, but of course every console would have to be kept in sync with all the transactions and buying 2-6 copies of the game isn’t exactly attractive. Another possible solution is to make 9 share cards for each company and divvy them out as necessary. That would make the stock situation easily trackable by all. Of course share pricing would still only be available on the console.

In our game Bob did the standard Monopoly classic of landing on Telefonica aka Park Place and then rolling snake eyes to land on BT aka Boardwalk. He did this so early that the rest of us were left scrambling to buy up companies and get trades made so that other competing monopolies could be formed. In fact Bill kinda threw himself under the bus in order to get a monopoly or two formed and left himself without one to show for it. Alas it was too late anyway and too many of us landed on Telefonica/BT in the meantime.

Dan had to leave so we called it midway in. In order to show total worth you simply hit the “Total” button and then add cash and utilities/railroad company values to get your final score. Bob won easily, followed by Matt and then the rest of us. It would’ve been interesting to see if we could’ve mounted a challenge to Bob’s victory. Some stock swaps and sales would’ve pumped enough money into everyone else’s coffers that more offices would’ve appeared.

I definitely want to try M-SE again, but probably only with a crowd that likes Monopoly to begin with and with the caveat that everyone learn to use the handheld unit. The shares add an interesting twist that I’d like to explore a bit more, although I’m not yet sure it’s worth all the effort.

Game: Monopoly: Stock Exchange

Thread: Re: English/American rules?

Thread: English/American rules?

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Thread: Session Report