10 ms·

The Landlord's Game

214 points by mmlkrx 5y ago

kqr2 5y ago
For those in the SF Bay Area, you can play this game: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/bay-area-regional-planner https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/bay-area-regional-plann...
- barbazoo 5y ago
  I wish there was a Vancouver one.
dang 5y ago
There's also https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-landlords-game/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-landlords-game/ (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10685690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10685690, but no discussion there)
- jamestnz 5y ago
  The Dollop, an American history podcast, also did an interesting episode on The Landlord's Game: https://soundcloud.com/the-dollop/379-the-landlords-game https://soundcloud.com/the-dollop/379-the-landlords-game
- karmelapple 5y ago
  Under the Boardwalk: The Monopoly Story is a fun documentary that talks about origin of the game, including The Landlord’s Game, and also includes a fair amount of coverage of a national and international tournament. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1250861/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1250861/ I would have liked it to dwell more on the roots and the meta-level of what the game is trying to say, and how that seems to be missed by most people who play it. But was still a fun watch on a lazy weekend day. Streaming free on Amazon Prime right now: https://watch.amazon.com/detail?gti=amzn1.dv.gti.1cad6f64-665e-885c-ccc4-d0b9f54a75bd&territory=US&ref_=share_ios_movie&r=web https://watch.amazon.com/detail?gti=amzn1.dv.gti.1cad6f64-66...
nwah1 5y ago
Fascintating piece of history. The inspiration behind the game Monopoly was an attempt to educate people on the immoral nature of the current landownership paradigm. But interestingly, it is based on the same original classical liberal arguments that spawned free market philosophy.
- thedudeabides5 5y ago
  Kind of like how crypto was started as a reaction to broken financial institutions and is now being marketed as a get rich quick scheme. Sometimes we become what we set out or destroy.
  - rybosworld 5y ago
    Breaking away from financial institutions and getting rich, are not mutually exclusive.
  - hnick 5y ago
    > marketed as a get rich quick scheme I am seeing bus stop ads here in Sydney with a tagline from a BTC exchange saying something like "If you're seeing bitcoin on a billboard, it's time to buy". Now I'm hardly an astute investor but I thought the usual rule is that if your cabbie starts talking about it, it's time to get out of the market.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      Definitely true. During the big silver run a few years ago, the owner of a local Lebanese restaurant made an investment in a solid silver statue of his late dog. That was the sign of the near peak. I think crypto has plenty of run left. It’s still a pain to buy. When your dentist is loading up his 401k with Bitcoin ETFs, that’s going to be the peak.
    - mrits 5y ago
      If your cabbie understands BTC you might have a point. We aren't even close to there yet
larsiusprime 5y ago
For anyone curious about the philosophy behind this game, known variously as Georgism or Geoism, a decent review of the principle text, Progress & Poverty, was just posted on Astral Codex Ten: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr... (A bit long, but pretty comprehensive and hey, it's shorter than the actual book).
- sirodoht 5y ago
  Extremely interesting book and theory, definitely recommended. Also contains a take on UBI, which might interest some readers.
- standardUser 5y ago
  I will take a look at this. But in the past, my (meager) attempts at understanding Georgism have not been very successful. I'd love to see some examples of what specific laws would be implemented, what taxation would look like (in actual percentages and dollar amounts) and things like that to understand what a system could look like in action.
  - peteretep 5y ago
    "The main Georgist policy recommendation is a tax assessed on land value. Georgists argue that revenues from a land value tax (LVT) can be used to reduce or eliminate existing taxes such as on income, trade, or purchases that are unfair and inefficient. Some Georgists also advocate for the return of surplus public revenue to the people by means of a basic income or citizen's dividend."
  - jlg23 5y ago
    Apparently the answer is in the rule book as well (from the WP article): "The set had rules for two different games, anti-monopolist and a monopolist. The anti-monopolist rules reward all during wealth creation while the monopolist rules had the goal of forming monopolies and forcing opponents out of the game. A win in the anti-monopolist or Single Tax version (later called "Prosperity"), was when the player having the lowest monetary amount has doubled his original stake."
jackcosgrove 5y ago
> With Magie's first patent having expired, in 1923, Magie decided to attempt to regain control by applying for another patent. That's... unfortunate.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  The Patent-Troll's Game, LOL.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dredmorbius 5y ago
I can strongly recommend following the first Wikipedia external link to a true labour of love, http://landlordsgame.info/ http://landlordsgame.info/ A tremendous amount of background on the Landlord's Game and Lizzie Maggie.
wombatmobile 5y ago
Monopoly was popular with kids on my block back in Palo Alto in the 60's. At least, it was omnipresent in collections, and we'd attempt to play it every so often... I can't remember one game that didn't feature (a) disputes about rules and the administration of the bank; (b) animosity and dissatisfaction upon exit; and (c) hollow emptiness for the (newly friendless)"winner".
- mjevans 5y ago
  Short version: You're _supposed_ to strictly follow the rules AND the lack of pieces. Depleting the bank of houses to upgrade property with as a market cornering tactic. IRL similar to urban growth boundaries and no programs for upgrading the housing within them.
  - flower-giraffe 5y ago
    A very interesting twist is to play with real money. Set a sensible exchange rate to real money and treat the Monopoly money as “chips”. The tactics and strategy significantly change because there is real external value to the assets and currency - but only for the duration of the game. Apart from anything else it means the game ends much faster.
    - fouronnes3 5y ago
      That's an interesting idea. I've had fun playing with another twist. Follow the rules strictly but start with 1/3 the usual starting money.
      - mod 5y ago
        Sounds like this would just extend the period where people have to get lucky to gain an advantage. So it would appear more even for a longer time. (I do agree that would be more fun)
        WorldMaker 5y ago
the_local_host 5y ago
> Any natural resource which is inherently limited in supply can generate economic rent... Georgists argue that taxing economic rent is efficient, fair and equitable. Take out "natural" and it seems like any non-inflationary cryptocurrency would be a target for a Georgist tax.
- pgreenwood 5y ago
  The difference is you can opt out of the crypto game, not so easy with natural resources like land.
- exclipy 5y ago
  Treat "carbon budget" as a natural resource and you've invented a carbon tax. Georgism just makes so much sense because if "mother nature" (or "natural capital", if you want to sound less hippie) is not charging for the things we take from it, then we're basically stealing from it. Even if you're a hardcore capitalist, you have to agree that it's not truly capitalism if it's all based on stealing from the largest provider in the system.
dools 5y ago
Anyone in Australia interested in Georgism should check out http://www.prosper.org.au http://www.prosper.org.au ... I first learned about the landlords game and the origins of monopoly chatting with them :)
divbzero 5y ago
It’s curious that Lizzie Magie chose a price-to-rent ratio of 10 [1] for the first version of The Landlord’s Game, wonder if that would have been typical for US real estate in 1904. The same ratio today would be unusually landlord-friendly. [2] [1]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BoardGamePatentMagie.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BoardGamePatentMagie... [2]: https://smartasset.com/mortgage/price-to-rent-ratio-50-largest-cities-2020 https://smartasset.com/mortgage/price-to-rent-ratio-50-large...
- ummonk 5y ago
  I'm not sure a turn in monopoly time is equivalent to a year in real world time.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  Or buyer friendly, presumably. You can't tell which based on the ratio, surely. >The 2018 median home value in San Francisco was $1,195,700, and the median annual rent was $22,560.// So it's probably comparing cheap rental properties with expensive owner-occupied properties? That's likely not very useful as a statistic on it's own unless you've got the distribution of both. Better would be making a comparison of the rental price (including charges) vs TCO of ownership for directly comparable properties -- that would be a lot of work. FWIW 10x price-to-rent isn't far off right in my area of my city in the UK. Houses prices and rental prices are high compared to wages, IMO.
BeetleB 5y ago
Quite a coincidence: Just a week or two ago I saw a History Detectives episode on this. https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/early-monopoly/ https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/earl...
- beermonster 5y ago
  Or the opposite? Maybe OP saw that episode and decided to look it up on Wikipedia and post here ? :)
dasKrokodil 5y ago
Every time this comes up I wonder whether the Landlord's Game can be played with a regular Monopoly set. Is it just the rules that have changed, or did the original game also contain different pieces/cards?
- eloeffler 5y ago
  Yes, I wonder the same... The wikipedia article points to landlordsgame.info. Thereyou can also see a picture with all the cards and chips that came with it. It seems a lot. But there is no complete, printable copy of them: http://landlordsgame.info/games/lg-1906/images/lg-1906_egc-pieces.jpg http://landlordsgame.info/games/lg-1906/images/lg-1906_egc-p...
  - eloeffler 5y ago
    And I found this: https://thelandlordgame.com/index.html https://thelandlordgame.com/index.html Seems to be based on it. Don't know how closely it relates but it is CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 licensed and you can just download it.
    - dasKrokodil 5y ago
      Nice find, thanks!
DonHopkins 5y ago
I posted this a few years ago, about Micropoly (Microsoft Monopoly), Ralf Anspach's Anti-Monopoly, and Monopoly’s Anti-Capitalist Origins: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16261425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16261425 A while ago (1999) I made a "Micropoly" board game about the Microsoft Monopoly, with cards for various dot-com companies (Copyleft (L) 1999 Free Monopoly Foundation), using an xml file to define the cards and board and an ugly Perl script to render them with PostScript! http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/ http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/ >Update: I've written an ugly "openopoly.pl" Perl script, and a "micropoly.xml" data file, that describes the specifics of the game. The Perl script reads in and parses the XML database, and writes out PostScript and HTML to render the graphics and web pages. It embeds EPS files with images and cartoons in the PostScript file, and then runs it all through GhostScript, to render out PDF and JPG files with the printable images of the board. It currently writes out one HTML file with links to the small and large pictures of all the property cards, and soon it will write out a web page for each property, and link them all together, as well as an image map for the entire board. Most of the logos, cartoons, and other graphics haven't been put in yet, but the basic functionality for producing the game is there. This is work in progress, but here's a preview of the automatically generated web page index of properties, the full sized board micropoly-board-whole.pdf [1,672k], the paginated board micropoly-board-split.pdf [10,028k, sorry but I'll optimize the PostScript not to draw clipped images and it will reduce in size], and the printable cards micropoly-cards.pdf [5087k], as well as the micropoly.xml file from which it was all generated. http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly.xml http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly.xml http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly-board-whole.pdf http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly-board-whole.p... http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly-cards.pdf http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly-cards.pdf The idea (which I never finished but encourage anyone else to pick up and run with) was to develop a fully skinnable parametrizable Monopoly compatible game template (or variants like Anti-Monopoly), that you could print out and glue onto cardboard, or even play online! http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/notes.html http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/notes.html Monopoly is essentially the original "Open Source Game" designed by Elizabeth Magie and shared among Atlantic City Quakers. Then it was illegitimately taken over and patented by a giant corporation. Parker Brothers' story about Charles Darrow was marketing bullshit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Magie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Magie There's also an interesting story about Ralph Anspach's decade-long "Anti-Monopoly" lawsuit: http://www.antimonopoly.com/ http://www.antimonopoly.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Anspach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Anspach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/columns/straight-dope/article/13040530/straight-dope-monopolys-anti-capitalist-origins https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/columns/straight-dope/ar... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_board_game_Monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_board_game_Mono... >Also in the 1970s, Professor Ralph Anspach, who had himself published a board game intended to illustrate the principles of both monopolies and trust busting, fought Parker Brothers and its then parent company, General Mills, over the copyright and trademarks of the Monopoly board game. Through the research of Anspach and others, much of the early history of the game was "rediscovered" and entered into official United States court records. Because of the lengthy court process, including appeals, the legal status of Parker Brothers' copyright and trademarks on the game was not settled until 1985. The game's name remains a registered trademark of Parker Brothers, as do its specific design elements; other elements of the game are still protected under copyright law. At the conclusion of the court case, the game's logo and graphic design elements became part of a larger Monopoly brand, licensed by Parker Brothers' parent companies onto a variety of items through the present day. Despite the "rediscovery" of the board game's early history in the 1970s and 1980s, and several books and journal articles on the subject, Hasbro (Parker Brothers' current parent company) did not acknowledge any of the game's history before Charles Darrow on its official Monopoly website as recently as June 2012. Nor did Hasbro acknowledge anyone other than Darrow in materials published or sponsored by them, at least as recently as 2009.

214 points by mmlkrx 5y ago

kqr2 5y ago

For those in the SF Bay Area, you can play this game: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/bay-area-regional-planner https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/bay-area-regional-plann...

barbazoo 5y ago
I wish there was a Vancouver one.

dang 5y ago

There's also https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-landlords-game/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-landlords-game/ (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10685690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10685690, but no discussion there)

jamestnz 5y ago
The Dollop, an American history podcast, also did an interesting episode on The Landlord's Game: https://soundcloud.com/the-dollop/379-the-landlords-game https://soundcloud.com/the-dollop/379-the-landlords-game
karmelapple 5y ago
Under the Boardwalk: The Monopoly Story is a fun documentary that talks about origin of the game, including The Landlord’s Game, and also includes a fair amount of coverage of a national and international tournament. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1250861/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1250861/ I would have liked it to dwell more on the roots and the meta-level of what the game is trying to say, and how that seems to be missed by most people who play it. But was still a fun watch on a lazy weekend day. Streaming free on Amazon Prime right now: https://watch.amazon.com/detail?gti=amzn1.dv.gti.1cad6f64-665e-885c-ccc4-d0b9f54a75bd&territory=US&ref_=share_ios_movie&r=web https://watch.amazon.com/detail?gti=amzn1.dv.gti.1cad6f64-66...

nwah1 5y ago

Fascintating piece of history. The inspiration behind the game Monopoly was an attempt to educate people on the immoral nature of the current landownership paradigm. But interestingly, it is based on the same original classical liberal arguments that spawned free market philosophy.

thedudeabides5 5y ago
Kind of like how crypto was started as a reaction to broken financial institutions and is now being marketed as a get rich quick scheme. Sometimes we become what we set out or destroy.
- rybosworld 5y ago
  Breaking away from financial institutions and getting rich, are not mutually exclusive.
- hnick 5y ago
  > marketed as a get rich quick scheme I am seeing bus stop ads here in Sydney with a tagline from a BTC exchange saying something like "If you're seeing bitcoin on a billboard, it's time to buy". Now I'm hardly an astute investor but I thought the usual rule is that if your cabbie starts talking about it, it's time to get out of the market.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    Definitely true. During the big silver run a few years ago, the owner of a local Lebanese restaurant made an investment in a solid silver statue of his late dog. That was the sign of the near peak. I think crypto has plenty of run left. It’s still a pain to buy. When your dentist is loading up his 401k with Bitcoin ETFs, that’s going to be the peak.
  - mrits 5y ago
    If your cabbie understands BTC you might have a point. We aren't even close to there yet

larsiusprime 5y ago

For anyone curious about the philosophy behind this game, known variously as Georgism or Geoism, a decent review of the principle text, Progress & Poverty, was just posted on Astral Codex Ten: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr... (A bit long, but pretty comprehensive and hey, it's shorter than the actual book).

sirodoht 5y ago
Extremely interesting book and theory, definitely recommended. Also contains a take on UBI, which might interest some readers.
standardUser 5y ago
I will take a look at this. But in the past, my (meager) attempts at understanding Georgism have not been very successful. I'd love to see some examples of what specific laws would be implemented, what taxation would look like (in actual percentages and dollar amounts) and things like that to understand what a system could look like in action.
- peteretep 5y ago
  "The main Georgist policy recommendation is a tax assessed on land value. Georgists argue that revenues from a land value tax (LVT) can be used to reduce or eliminate existing taxes such as on income, trade, or purchases that are unfair and inefficient. Some Georgists also advocate for the return of surplus public revenue to the people by means of a basic income or citizen's dividend."
- jlg23 5y ago
  Apparently the answer is in the rule book as well (from the WP article): "The set had rules for two different games, anti-monopolist and a monopolist. The anti-monopolist rules reward all during wealth creation while the monopolist rules had the goal of forming monopolies and forcing opponents out of the game. A win in the anti-monopolist or Single Tax version (later called "Prosperity"), was when the player having the lowest monetary amount has doubled his original stake."

jackcosgrove 5y ago

> With Magie's first patent having expired, in 1923, Magie decided to attempt to regain control by applying for another patent. That's... unfortunate.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
The Patent-Troll's Game, LOL.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dredmorbius 5y ago

I can strongly recommend following the first Wikipedia external link to a true labour of love, http://landlordsgame.info/ http://landlordsgame.info/ A tremendous amount of background on the Landlord's Game and Lizzie Maggie.

wombatmobile 5y ago

Monopoly was popular with kids on my block back in Palo Alto in the 60's. At least, it was omnipresent in collections, and we'd attempt to play it every so often... I can't remember one game that didn't feature (a) disputes about rules and the administration of the bank; (b) animosity and dissatisfaction upon exit; and (c) hollow emptiness for the (newly friendless)"winner".

mjevans 5y ago
Short version: You're _supposed_ to strictly follow the rules AND the lack of pieces. Depleting the bank of houses to upgrade property with as a market cornering tactic. IRL similar to urban growth boundaries and no programs for upgrading the housing within them.
- flower-giraffe 5y ago
  A very interesting twist is to play with real money. Set a sensible exchange rate to real money and treat the Monopoly money as “chips”. The tactics and strategy significantly change because there is real external value to the assets and currency - but only for the duration of the game. Apart from anything else it means the game ends much faster.
  - fouronnes3 5y ago
    That's an interesting idea. I've had fun playing with another twist. Follow the rules strictly but start with 1/3 the usual starting money.
    - mod 5y ago
      Sounds like this would just extend the period where people have to get lucky to gain an advantage. So it would appear more even for a longer time. (I do agree that would be more fun)
      - WorldMaker 5y ago

the_local_host 5y ago

> Any natural resource which is inherently limited in supply can generate economic rent... Georgists argue that taxing economic rent is efficient, fair and equitable. Take out "natural" and it seems like any non-inflationary cryptocurrency would be a target for a Georgist tax.

pgreenwood 5y ago
The difference is you can opt out of the crypto game, not so easy with natural resources like land.
exclipy 5y ago
Treat "carbon budget" as a natural resource and you've invented a carbon tax. Georgism just makes so much sense because if "mother nature" (or "natural capital", if you want to sound less hippie) is not charging for the things we take from it, then we're basically stealing from it. Even if you're a hardcore capitalist, you have to agree that it's not truly capitalism if it's all based on stealing from the largest provider in the system.

dools 5y ago

Anyone in Australia interested in Georgism should check out http://www.prosper.org.au http://www.prosper.org.au ... I first learned about the landlords game and the origins of monopoly chatting with them :)

divbzero 5y ago

It’s curious that Lizzie Magie chose a price-to-rent ratio of 10 [1] for the first version of The Landlord’s Game, wonder if that would have been typical for US real estate in 1904. The same ratio today would be unusually landlord-friendly. [2] [1]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BoardGamePatentMagie.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BoardGamePatentMagie... [2]: https://smartasset.com/mortgage/price-to-rent-ratio-50-largest-cities-2020 https://smartasset.com/mortgage/price-to-rent-ratio-50-large...

ummonk 5y ago
I'm not sure a turn in monopoly time is equivalent to a year in real world time.
pbhjpbhj 5y ago
Or buyer friendly, presumably. You can't tell which based on the ratio, surely. >The 2018 median home value in San Francisco was $1,195,700, and the median annual rent was $22,560.// So it's probably comparing cheap rental properties with expensive owner-occupied properties? That's likely not very useful as a statistic on it's own unless you've got the distribution of both. Better would be making a comparison of the rental price (including charges) vs TCO of ownership for directly comparable properties -- that would be a lot of work. FWIW 10x price-to-rent isn't far off right in my area of my city in the UK. Houses prices and rental prices are high compared to wages, IMO.

BeetleB 5y ago

Quite a coincidence: Just a week or two ago I saw a History Detectives episode on this. https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/early-monopoly/ https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/earl...

beermonster 5y ago
Or the opposite? Maybe OP saw that episode and decided to look it up on Wikipedia and post here ? :)

dasKrokodil 5y ago

Every time this comes up I wonder whether the Landlord's Game can be played with a regular Monopoly set. Is it just the rules that have changed, or did the original game also contain different pieces/cards?

eloeffler 5y ago
Yes, I wonder the same... The wikipedia article points to landlordsgame.info. Thereyou can also see a picture with all the cards and chips that came with it. It seems a lot. But there is no complete, printable copy of them: http://landlordsgame.info/games/lg-1906/images/lg-1906_egc-pieces.jpg http://landlordsgame.info/games/lg-1906/images/lg-1906_egc-p...
- eloeffler 5y ago
  And I found this: https://thelandlordgame.com/index.html https://thelandlordgame.com/index.html Seems to be based on it. Don't know how closely it relates but it is CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 licensed and you can just download it.
  - dasKrokodil 5y ago
    Nice find, thanks!

DonHopkins 5y ago

I posted this a few years ago, about Micropoly (Microsoft Monopoly), Ralf Anspach's Anti-Monopoly, and Monopoly’s Anti-Capitalist Origins: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16261425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16261425 A while ago (1999) I made a "Micropoly" board game about the Microsoft Monopoly, with cards for various dot-com companies (Copyleft (L) 1999 Free Monopoly Foundation), using an xml file to define the cards and board and an ugly Perl script to render them with PostScript! http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/ http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/ >Update: I've written an ugly "openopoly.pl" Perl script, and a "micropoly.xml" data file, that describes the specifics of the game. The Perl script reads in and parses the XML database, and writes out PostScript and HTML to render the graphics and web pages. It embeds EPS files with images and cartoons in the PostScript file, and then runs it all through GhostScript, to render out PDF and JPG files with the printable images of the board. It currently writes out one HTML file with links to the small and large pictures of all the property cards, and soon it will write out a web page for each property, and link them all together, as well as an image map for the entire board. Most of the logos, cartoons, and other graphics haven't been put in yet, but the basic functionality for producing the game is there. This is work in progress, but here's a preview of the automatically generated web page index of properties, the full sized board micropoly-board-whole.pdf [1,672k], the paginated board micropoly-board-split.pdf [10,028k, sorry but I'll optimize the PostScript not to draw clipped images and it will reduce in size], and the printable cards micropoly-cards.pdf [5087k], as well as the micropoly.xml file from which it was all generated. http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly.xml http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly.xml http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly-board-whole.pdf http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly-board-whole.p... http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly-cards.pdf http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly-cards.pdf The idea (which I never finished but encourage anyone else to pick up and run with) was to develop a fully skinnable parametrizable Monopoly compatible game template (or variants like Anti-Monopoly), that you could print out and glue onto cardboard, or even play online! http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/notes.html http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/notes.html Monopoly is essentially the original "Open Source Game" designed by Elizabeth Magie and shared among Atlantic City Quakers. Then it was illegitimately taken over and patented by a giant corporation. Parker Brothers' story about Charles Darrow was marketing bullshit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Magie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Magie There's also an interesting story about Ralph Anspach's decade-long "Anti-Monopoly" lawsuit: http://www.antimonopoly.com/ http://www.antimonopoly.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Anspach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Anspach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/columns/straight-dope/article/13040530/straight-dope-monopolys-anti-capitalist-origins https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/columns/straight-dope/ar... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_board_game_Monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_board_game_Mono... >Also in the 1970s, Professor Ralph Anspach, who had himself published a board game intended to illustrate the principles of both monopolies and trust busting, fought Parker Brothers and its then parent company, General Mills, over the copyright and trademarks of the Monopoly board game. Through the research of Anspach and others, much of the early history of the game was "rediscovered" and entered into official United States court records. Because of the lengthy court process, including appeals, the legal status of Parker Brothers' copyright and trademarks on the game was not settled until 1985. The game's name remains a registered trademark of Parker Brothers, as do its specific design elements; other elements of the game are still protected under copyright law. At the conclusion of the court case, the game's logo and graphic design elements became part of a larger Monopoly brand, licensed by Parker Brothers' parent companies onto a variety of items through the present day. Despite the "rediscovery" of the board game's early history in the 1970s and 1980s, and several books and journal articles on the subject, Hasbro (Parker Brothers' current parent company) did not acknowledge any of the game's history before Charles Darrow on its official Monopoly website as recently as June 2012. Nor did Hasbro acknowledge anyone other than Darrow in materials published or sponsored by them, at least as recently as 2009.