The following are rules that we tried out in a game of Triple Monopoly. In other words, if the picture there (image courtesy of Rox of Spazhouse) doesn’t tell the whole story, we overlapped three different flavors of Monopoly. The ones in question were a regular Millennium edition of Monopoly (fairly standard), the Pixar Monopoly and G.I. Joe Monopoly. The first round of rules you see here is what we started the game with, and these are based on a number of different versions of the game that we found elsewhere. Not surprisingly, we’re not the first people to want to try this. However, we share these rules in the spirit of giving back to the Excessive Gaming Community.
1. The three boards are joined at the corners. Each board has a GO space. If you pass GO, you collect $200, no matter what GO you pass.
2. You must pass GO to collect the $200. Landing on it doesn’t get you the dough.
3. If you land on a GO, you may select to move to the next board or just continue around the board you’re on. You must announce what you intend to do before you roll.
4. If you don’t land on GO and just pass it, you move to the next board, turning to the left. In other words, if you just pass GO on each board, you’ll move around the outsides of the combined boards.
5. Any penalties or non-rent cash you have to pay goes into the center of the center board.
6. You might notice there is only one Free Parking space. Yes, you land on that, you get the combined haul of all three boards. Yes.
7. Starting cash is $4500 ($1500/board).
8. Rent for utilities is as follows: 1 owned, 5x1D roll. 2 owned, 10x1D roll. 3 owned, 15x1D roll. You get the point.
9. Rent for railroads work the same way: 1: $25, 2: $50, 3: $100, 4: $200, 5: $400, 6: $800, 7: $1600 8: $3200, etc.
10. When being sent someplace, you go to the next one if you had simply moved around the three boards as defined in #4. This applies to Go, Jail, etc. Unless otherwise stated on the card, you might pass Go more than once. You know what that means.
11. You need all the colors of a type of property across all the boards to start building hotels. If you own all the colors on a single board, you can build up to two houses. If you own all the colors on two boards, you can build up to four houses.
One quick clarification we established early on: you only collect $200 passing Go one way. If you pass go and turn left to move to the next board (see #4) then you get no money. So just like a regular Monopoly board has you going around before you get cash again, once you pass the third Go, you’re on your own until you go back to the first board’s Go.
Some other things we established while play-testing this nonsense:
- If there are “special abilities” that come from the board you’re playing on, they only work on that board. In this case, the G.I. Joe Monopoly will let you have a weapon if you gain all of a particular color. Those are only effective on that board.
- Negotiations quickly turned to “amnesties.” In other words, I’ll give you this in return for a certain number of times I can land on it with no penalty. That sort of thing. This I had seen before. However, clever bastards as we had at the table, these became tradeable like anything else. I would suggest if you are going to use “amnesties” or “free passes,” establish at the time they’re created if they are transferable or not. This will avoid unrest later.
- Because this game takes a long time, people will exit the game due to time constraints rather than just dropping out due to normal play. If someone wishes to step in and take over the seat, they can keep all of the properties, money, etc. However, I highly recommend that the “bequeathing” of one’s entire array of assets to another play be verboten. Instead, if someone is exiting the game and no one is taking over the seat, the player exiting can bequeath one item or set of items to each player–if he or she chooses–for example, a single property or monopoly–otherwise, everything that’s not bequeathed goes back into the bank.
That’s what we came up with. The game lasted about seven hours and ended in a tie when the two remaining players came to the conclusion that, seeing as how they were engaged, they would own each others’ stuff soon enough anyway. We broke once an hour for the sake of food, sanity and potty breaks. Special thanks to all the guinea pigs who participated in the madness.
We’d love to hear what results you achieve via your own experimentation. Good luck.
How many people played?
I believe we ultimately had eight seats going.
How does this work with multi-leveled monopoly boards? Also, how do I beat the robots who play these n-level games?
sounds very cool… surprised it only took 7 hours to get it down to two people…
oh forgot to ask, how much coffee was consumed during that 7 hours?
@Wayne: Not really coffee but alcohol.
@Astan: I’ve thought about how to use multiple boards on different levels but no workable ideas yet.
my frends and i did a 2 board version with normal and red sox 2004 monopoly. We played a version where we used 2 speed dice . So at the end, i had 2 monopolys and the other player had 3. So if you rolled the mr.monopoly , you were going to pay rent.
I purchcased an add-on (Super Add-ons)that fits in the middle and adds properties, utilities and movement cards. When I went to play this with a friend to try it out we realized that I had mixed the cards (comm. chest and chance) from three different versions. Since they didn’t all match the board we had, I decided to come up with a board that had all of the properties on one board. It has two levels plus the add-on fits in the middle. We kept a Free Parking on both of our levels. Drew it all out on poster paper with some help from some teen-agers. Interesting because of the mix of property values. Used Regular, Here and Now and The America Special Edition properties/pieces. One board the property prices are in the hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars. So, we mix the money also. Have played once and we are still finalizing the rules before I print the board and cards out. Our first atempt took about 4 hours with two of us playing and we ended out of tiredness. All properties were not even owned yet except for on the add-on board and I think the lower level with the origianal properties and lower prices. Once we have all the rules finalized we will play again and see how long it takes. Like some of your rules. Especially about Monopolies and buying properties. That was one of the things we were still working out (how many of each property on each level you had to own to build).
Great post. My family and I regularly play 4 board or more monopoly. We have our own set of rules like your amnesty, we have free rent. If someone owns more than 1 of the same monopoly on different boards they get double that rent. Up to 4 times if you have all 4 monopolies. $8000 rent for Boardwalk gets expensive.