Hello,

I think Monopoly auction behavior should be changed. Right now, the person whose turn it is can mortgage and sell houses when an auction happens, but others cannot. In a two-player game where one player has negative cash, the other player could get 1 or 2 properties for 10 currency each, or whatever the auction minimum is set at. This should be an option in my opinion, when to allow access to the house and mortgage facilities of the game:

• Only on one's turn, not including any auctions
• Only on one's turn, including auctions that the player has started
• Only on one's turn and during all auctions
• At all times

I'd like these options to exist this way because I believe in official Monopoly rules, you can actually buy and sell houses whenever, not just when it's your turn. Table masters can also retain the existing behavior via the second option, if they wish.

I also have an other idea, we should be able to edit the house and hotel stocks if we wish.

Hello,

The fixed number of houses and hotels in stock is there for a good reason and I'm not going to change it.
It must be part of your strategy.

Now for your main proposition, it's true that official rules allow to manage houses at any time, and it looks effectively quite unfair that someone can do it during auctions while others cannot.
This behavior is quite unexpected.

However, to keep things simple, I think that two options would be sufficient:

• Allow to buy/sell houses at any time, even when it isn't your turn or during auctions
• Disallow buying/selling houses during auctions for everybody, even at your turn

Note that, when the first option is active, we might need to also reconsider what happens when you go negative cash. In theory, it should be bankrupt immediately, you shouldn't have a grace turn to fix your balance.
Maybe the next player shouldn't be able to play while anyone has debts.
It will also ask the question of being able to make exchanges at any time, in order to allow unblocking the situation.

Well, in short, not that simple.
The simplest is to disallow selling houses during an auction, even if it's your turn.

What's your thoughts ?

Hello,

Fair enough about the house and hotel stocks.

Having two options seems sufficient to me. I suggested the four options because I wasn’t sure if there would be people who might want the other two for whatever reason, but those two options make sense.

I think that, if a player’s balance goes negative, the player should have to have a positive balance before they can end their turn. In this case the enter key can end the turn instead of rolling the dice or the turn can end automatically when the balance becomes positive. With this new system, there are two options for going bankrupt as I see it:

• A player can automatically go bankrupt when the value that they can feasibly obtain from mortgaging/selling is not sufficient to settle their balance, as the game currently works.
• A player can have access to trades when they would otherwise go bankrupt in case there is some deal that can be made. If not, enter will bankrupt the player.
I suggest the second option because that is often how more casual games of monopoly work. As you said, by strict interpretation of the rules a player should go bankrupt without having any opportunity to settle their debts, but I don’t think Monopoly is often played this way. I suppose for the purposes of adherence to the rules you could add this option, but I don’t think many people would use it. Also, it would not carry as much meaning because in the traditional game of monopoly, the player who bankrupts you receives your property.

In any case, I agree with being able to make trades during other players’ turns. This is also part of the American Monopoly rules, not sure about other boards.

Indeed, the simplest option for now—to effectively patch a bug—would be to disallow any purchasing during auctions. The more complicated rule changes are still worth considering, but it would be easier to disallow it first and then work on those changes for later.