Free Banking Monopoly
I while ago I read Kevin Galligan on board games and Markov chains. While the techniques he shares are valuable, I also happen to agree with him that part of the fun of board games is the social aspect of negotiating over a table with your friends about something ultimately inconsequential.
Here’s an idea to improve the fun level of games that involve some degree of resource management, as e.g. Monopoly does. Like any amazing idea, it could either work out great or be a complete disaster. To be clear, I have not yet had the opportunity to test this myself, but I’d really like to some day.
Under free banking11 Named after the similar historic periods in which a nation’s currency was decentralised and each bank printed their own banknotes. rules, all players are allowed to issue their own currency. Player-issued currencies cannot be used to pay in-game institutions such as the Monopoly bank22 Thus, in the case of Monopoly, purchasing property or plots of land that are not owned by other players is still done with proper Monopoly money. , however, they can be used in transactions between players. This is probably clearest with an example: imagine Kevin has landed on my property and now owes me $20.
To complicate things further, if Bob thinks highly of Alice’s fiscal policies and would consider 2:3 a fair exchange rate for Alice dollars, Bob can offer to take $35 in Alice dollars from Kevin, and give me $20 Monopoly dollars instead. Bob pockets the profit of $5 Alice dollars. This means that for every transaction between players, a market exchange rate is established by the lowest bidder.
