Bespoke Monopoly
A few years ago, the people who make Monopoly came up with the genius idea of local editions. You could go round your home town buying up the cathedral, the local footie stadium and so on. It was also, of course, tremendous fun to see if your street was of a high, or low, value – congratulations! you live in a shit part of town and now everybody knows it.

Recently, I found out that you can even have a truly bespoke edition:

www.mymonopoly.com/home.php

And became a bit obsessed about it (essentially you design your own monopoly board and can customise certain squares. Two things though, first, they don’t allow naughty words and second, it’s eighty fucking quid!)

Surely this is a fantastic idea for a couple of reasons. The first is that you can have a really, really, really local version. Live in a tiny village? A hamlet so small it actually has a horse sharing arrangement with a nearby town? The sort of place that has submitted a claim for an EU grant to afford an idiot? The sort of place that only famous folk singers and homicidal maniacs ever come from? Well, why not have a village edition, with local landmarks like the war memorial, church and bus shelter. In fact since they closed down the post office, that’s it for local landmarks, so you are going to have to get creative; ‘that spot where Darren shagged our Sally’, ‘Where Jon was sick after he drank all that scrumpy’, ‘Where we burned that tramp’, ‘The pond’, ‘Roadkill’ and so on.

But why are we restrained by geography? Monopoly comes out at family gatherings when the usual arguments have been exhausted and everyone needs some fresh material to bicker about. So how about some properties that have a special place in family history, ‘where Cousin Sadie had her first wedding’, ‘where cousin Sadie had her second wedding’, and have the second location cheaper than the first? Or the classic: ‘The house Tom’s bitch wife got in the divorce’?

Or moments or occasions? Like your twelfth birthday party could be a low value square because you peed yourself with excitement in front of everyone when you opened your present and it was He Man. (Oh, the humiliation!)

Other low value squares: the time your cousin tried to ‘touch’ you, the time your cousin went to prison because you made up that story about him ‘touching’ you, the time you held a funeral for your pet dog (that wasn’t actually dead, you were just going through a morbid phase). High value squares could be ‘My first drink’, ‘passing my driving test’ or the ever popular ‘out and proud’ (adjacent to ‘dad makes full recovery from heart attack’).

Better still: family secrets edition! But is ‘Tina’s little problem’ a high or low value square? And will ‘That time Auntie Vic came home early and found Uncle Tony sucking the milkman’s cock’ fit on one square.

Of course, the real benefit would be to use people, not places or occasions. Fed up with having to put up for years with Granma’s sadistic game of arranging family photographs on her sideboard in order of current preference, and always being banished to the Siberia that is propped up against the lamp? Then imagine her delight at finding that you have designated ‘Granny Gin Breath’ as the lowest value square on the board.

I predict a fist fight before anyone passes ‘Go!’
(Macnabbs may contain traces of exaggeration on, Fri 27 Nov 2009, 16:16, 4 replies)

There's a version on amazone
Which you print yourself - it comes with templates and stickers. Considerably cheaper - about £12
www.amazon.co.uk/Paul-Lamond-Games-PLG3480-Opoly/dp/B0000AC97S/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=toys&qid=1259341287&sr=8-10
( heyrudi has just found this setting, Fri 27 Nov 2009, 17:01, closed)

We've had a couple of those
I've played Star Wars monopoly, and a version themed for my home town. It's one of those ideas you think is going to be great but turns out to be rubbish - the whole attraction of the game for me is the fact that we used to play it at Christmas growing up with my family, and the tactile feel of the wooden houses that you can't buy anymore, and the names of the London streets.
(potato123, Fri 27 Nov 2009, 17:52, closed)

wooden houses
the newer editions are back to wooden houses (well, I was brought a wooden house edition 3 years ago)
(ignoramusaurus, Mon 30 Nov 2009, 10:19, closed)

Yeal
the invention of local Monopoly was shit for us Londoners. Probably dropped the house prices around here by 50%
(ignoramusaurus, Mon 30 Nov 2009, 10:18, closed)