Welcome to the first edition of Games From The Crypt, where we’ll take a look at games from that ancient, pre-Kickstarter era that may not have as high a profile as they once did but are still absolutely worth seeking out to play and enjoy. Some of the games I’ll excavate for your consideration will be of monumental historic importance, casting the long shadow of influence over the entirety of hobby games. Others might just be weird, esoteric one-hit wonders or ne’er-do-wells that deserve a second look. I’ve been writing about board games for over 25 years and playing them for shamefully close to 45 years. Since I’m an old school crate digger it’s only ever made sense to me to go hunting for the great games of the past. And I think that hobby games as a medium deserve a historical sense of context as rich and respectful as books, music, and film enjoy. In the coming articles I hope to share with you some things you might have missed among the clutter of today’s tabletop games marketplace, some things you might have wondered about, and some things that you may have never heard of. I think it’ll be fun, and I hope you’ll enjoy digging back through the history of tabletop games with me!
I had a long, contentious internal debate about what game to feature in this, the first installment of Games From the Crypt, but one clear victor emerged. And it’s one that you might never have expected to read about here on Goonhammer, most likely because it’s a game you hate. Without further ado: Monopoly, quite possibly the most important and misunderstood tabletop game ever published.
Let’s go back to this reviled game’s origins to get a better picture of why it matters and why I think all game players should think a little more critically about it rather than relegating it to shorthand for “sucky game.” There’s an interesting history here beyond the fact that this game, at the dawn of the 20th century, almost single-handed laid the bedrock for thematic games.
In 1903, Lizzie Magie was something of a Renaissance woman, ahead of her time in many ways – she was an abolitionist, a writer, a reporter, an actress, and an inventor. She patented an invention that would become the mechanism that automatically fed paper through typewriters. She was a staunch feminist and anti-capitalist. And, she wanted to express her belief that private land monopolies were destructive and contributed to poverty. So she sat down to design a board game called The Landlord Game, based largely on British economist Henry George’s single tax theory.
It was simplistic game as you might imagine, but the foundational elements of what would later become Monopoly were there – the track around the board, spaces where you had to pay fines, others that you could invest your money in and make others pay rent when they landed on them. She even had two rules variants – one that had a more Socialist bent, rewarding all players for generating wealth and another that was more specifically about developing land monopolies and running other players into bankruptcy.
She self-published the game for quite a few years and it became fairly well-known in the United States. Imitators also sprang up, borrowing her concepts and sometimes embellishing them with new rules and details. In 1923 she patented The Landlord Game. I love that she was billed as “famous originator of games” on this early edition- a well-earned credit.
In 1932 one Charles Darrow, who is usually and incorrectly credited as the designer of Monopoly, encountered The Landlord Game at a dinner party and subsequently decided to independently publish a version of the game with some minor changes. Parker Brothers bought the rights to what was then being called Monopoly from Charles Darrow and only after it was discovered that Lizzie Magie had actually designed this game was she compensated. She was paid $500. By 1935, the game was being published under a patent issued to Charles Darrow and it would go on to become one of the most iconic and recognized board games in the world through many editions, revisions, and IP applications.
Odds are, if you are reading this column, you’ve played it at some point. Or at least some version of it. You’ve likely made house rules that have completely bowdlerized the original concept. You’ve probably played Spider-Man, Doctor Who, Warhammer 40k, and Spongebob Squarepants versions of it. Maybe you’ve played with your family. Maybe you’ve played with strangers online. Monopoly is ubiquitous, but its origins as an economic critique designed by a woman have been purposefully obscured and largely forgotten.
What Lizzie Magie did, however, was truly groundbreaking. In a sense, what she did was carry forward the concept of a board game representing real-world material, themes, and situations into a 20th century setting with a very specific socio-political perspective. Games ranging from Mancala to Khemet to Chess have generally speaking carried a balance of abstraction and representation. But with The Landlord Game, this was given a much stronger since of almost literary metaphor. Player actions and interactions with the rules held meaning and expressed content. Her goal was for the game to be educational, and to demonstrate her agenda through the actual playing of the game.
Of course a lot of that was lost when Mr. Darrow, in true capitalist fashion, stole the game and extracted as much profit as possible from it while also perverting the game to be an actual celebration of rich-get-richer capitalism itself. But even in its later incarnations, the fact remains that Monopoly has still held a tremendous degree of influence over game design for nearing 100 years- even if it is used solely as a counter-example of what “good game design” means.
I absolutely think Monopoly is worth playing today, and in fact I would rather play it than any number of the bloated, overwrought, overdesigned Kickstarter fiascos laden with phony “content” and pointless cruft out there. It’s a simple, direct game on paper but it is also the kind of rules set that can generate compelling, frustrating, and hilarious social situations. Like many of the best board games, it tells a story through what the players actually do rather than in the pictures and flavor text on the materials. It was a quantum leap forward for games as a medium, capable of representing ideas, concepts, narrative, and roleplay- all key tenets of hobby gaming.
I would, however, suggest that anyone looking to revisit Monopoly today stick with traditional rules sets and the original theming with no “house rules”. Play it strictly as written and you will avoid a lot of the snafus and game-lengthening nonsense that many players have introduced to “help” the design.
It’s such a massively important, historically significant game – I really don’t see how hobby games, with their specific themes and detail, could have developed without what Lizzie Magie did over 100 years ago. It’s the kind of thing where it really doesn’t matter if you like it or not, whether you think it “sucks” or whatever – it simply persists and continues to be the most iconic, identifiable, and in some ways accessible board game ever published. And that makes it a perfect first subject for Games from the Crypt!
Next up: I use my broadsword!
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