Settlers of Catan: The New Monopoly?

For nearly 100 years, there has been one name dominating board games. So pervasive that no fewer than 1,200 different versions have been produced. So universal that it has been enjoyed in over 100 different countries. So marketable that it still continues to define the way that people talk, think and play board games despite a heyday that passed 75 years ago. That game, fittingly enough, is called Monopoly.

Monopoly has lots of great stuff going on. Bright, vivid color. Solid late '20s/early '30s iconography. Low prices, every day. The game demands skill and knowledge, because luck plays a factor and makes every move critical. Monopoly reigns for these reasons and many others, untouchable and practically synonymous with boardgames. But when was the last time anyone you know actually played it?

According to the US census, 37 million Americans played boardgames in 2003, not including lifestyle games like chess, card games, word games, trivia games and the like. Games like chess and Go, among many others, are disqualified from the Census' board game category (and from this article) because they tend to consume all of that person's gaming time, whereas Monopoly is usually part of a larger game library. Even among this large group of light players, though, Monopoly is a hard game to love.

The game has two major things going against it: First, it's too long. Everyone wants to get rich and, in Monopoly, house rules (like money under Free Parking) infuse cash into the game and drag it out. Second, Monopoly requires players to go broke one by one, and if you go broke, you get to sit and stare at everyone else wishing that you were having fun.

Monopoly may have been perfect for sitting around with your siblings and playing when you were snowed in; it sucks for modern families that have soccer practice, music lessons and doggie daycare. So what's going to fill this hole? Is there a game that plays to all of the strengths that has made Monopoly so popular — rolling dice, getting richer, trading, developing property, playing with cute little house-shaped bits — without the length and elimination issues?

Yes, there is. Designed by Klaus Teuber, The Settlers of Catan has already sold more than 10 million copies despite being under most people's radar. (If you don't find that name riveting, how exciting is the economics concept "monopoly"?) Players settle a small uncharted island by amassing five different resources (that is, goods instead of money) with which to build structures (cities and settlements instead of houses and hotels) or roads, or to acquire development cards (which aren't entirely unlike Chance and Community Chest cards, although you get to choose when you exploit these advantages). These resources are acquired by rolling two dice at the beginning of their turn. Familiar, huh? But Settlers is better.

Settlers finds ways to improve on ignored aspects of Monopoly. When you play Monopoly, you're supposed to trade, but every time you do you feel like you've been ripped off, so many people don't ... which just makes the game longer. In Settlers, you get to trade on every turn, and sometimes you come out a little ahead and sometimes you come out a little behind, but never do you get the feeling that one bad trade unilaterally hurt your chances.

So we have dice, wealth and property development, and most games of Settlers wrap up in about 90 minutes. Everyone is in every game until the end. Instead of bankrupting your opponents, you're racing to be the first to get 10 points.

The Settlers of Catan has been on the market for 12 years. Has it become the new Monopoly? In many ways, yes. It won the Game of the Year award in Germany, the vanguard of the modern boardgaming world. It has released not less than 25 expansions, rethemings and sequels, all of which significantly change gameplay and offer varied degrees of difficulty. Settlers has sold (and continues to sell) millions of copies in Europe and the United States and thousands of game are played daily on Internet gaming sites and, now, on Xbox Live Arcade, for those who believe "putting away the game" should involve hitting an off switch. Heck, there's even a junior edition called the Kids of Catan — it's gotta be better than Chutes and Ladders. You may think, "If there was a game that was on its way to being regarded as the next Monopoly, I would have heard about it." Well, you just did.

No, you can't get Settlers in a NASCAR or Philadelphia Eagles edition without any rules changes. Yes, the game will take a little longer to explain to your friends, but it's worth it. The hours of laughs and challenges that this game offers for the cost of four movie tickets are immeasurable. And when you're hunting down the 5-6 player expansion, you'll probably run smack into a boardgame revolution.

— JonMichael Rasmus (jmsr525@yahoo.com)