Shorter board games like Monopoly: five ways to finish a trading game in one evening
People who search for shorter board games like Monopoly usually have a specific evening in mind. They have two or three hours, a few friends and a wish to see a winner before bedtime. A long trading game can swallow that window. Below are the levers I would pull, taken from the settings of the online property trading game I build.
I should say up front what I cannot do. Property Rush has no round limit. It finishes when a single player still holds money. I will not promise you a finish time, and I did not time a game at each setting. What follows is my reasoning from the rules, plus one simulation note that I will name.
Where does the time go?
In my reading, a trading game is slow in the middle. Early on, people buy cities. Late on, someone runs out of cash. In between, everybody is solvent, every rent is small against a full purse, and nothing ends. Every lever below works by shrinking that middle.
What does a small purse do to rent?
A hotel on Giza charges 550 in rent. A purse of $500 cannot cover that, so the first fully built country in the game decides it. A purse of $5,000 could pay it nine times. That gap is the whole idea of the first lever. The smaller the starting money, the sooner one landing matters.
The five levers
- Start with less money. The host picks a purse of $500, $1,500, $2,000, $2,500 or $5,000. At $500 the first expensive rent hurts. At $5,000 almost nothing does. If you want an early finish, take the low end.
- Seat fewer people. The engine source carries a note from a simulation I ran. Within a fixed budget of moves, 88% of two-player games found a winner, against 12% of eight-player games. More seats means more capital chasing the same 28 buyable places, so bankruptcies thin out. Three or four seats is a sensible compromise.
- Keep auctions on. A city someone declines goes to a bidding round, and the table pays for it. Money leaves hands sooner than if the city sat unsold.
- Turn mortgages off. The engine comment says this makes debt far more dangerous. A player who cannot pay has fewer ways to stay alive, so the losers drop out faster. It is the harshest of the five, so use it only if the table likes risk.
- Let the clock work. Every turn gets 60 seconds, and then each player draws on a private bank of three minutes for the rest of the game. Nobody is rushed, but nobody can stall either.
Which combination would I try?
For a tight evening with friends, I would pick $500, three seats, auctions on and the rest at their defaults. For a looser one, $1,500 and four seats. For the shortest game this site offers, two players and a $500 purse.
I am describing a direction, not a stopwatch. Dice make any single game run long or short.
What about waiting for people?
The slowest part of a real board game is sometimes getting everyone to the table. A browser game removes some of that. I run Property Rush on Boardit, where the host sends a link and each person joins from their own device. If the numbers fall short, the host can seat a bot in the empty chair so the game does not wait.
Is a shorter game a worse one?
It is a different one. With a small purse, you cannot afford to wait for the perfect trade, so you buy more and haggle less. With a big purse, patience wins. Pick the one that suits your group and the hour.
Property Rush is an independent Monopoly alternative, and it is free to play online with friends.
Boardit is not affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro.
Ahmed Moaz builds Boardit, a free browser game site.