Straight Shootin': The Game of ...wait...How do we play this again?

We've all been there...

This past Christmas when we visited Mexico, I got another opportunity to experience the fun of Triopoly. Now, before anyone decides I've gone crazy and forgotten how to spell, allow me to elaborate.

Triopoly is a three-tiered monopoly style game. In it, to buy and own all the properties, you must often travel to multiple tiers to get the full set. To travel to another tier, you either draw a card that tells you to, or land on the elevator space. All in All, pretty exciting...after all...who doesn't need Monopoly X 3 in Time to play and Fun!

If you liked how long it took to finish a game of Monopoly, then you'll LOVE the equivalent of 3 Monopoly games in one!

My first exposure was a few years back. Juliet's family owned the game and her brother Julian, sister Dulce, Dulce's boyfriend Gary, Juliet and I sat down for a rousing game of Triopoly. Being new to the country and language, I was determined not to let them speaking Spanish during play keep me from winning. It is a U.S. Based game after all. I quickly learned phrases to recognize when my turn was up and practiced my Spanish counting to the point where I'm pretty sure we played the majority of it in Spanish---save for negotiations. And this is where it got interesting.

You see, I have always been aware that no two families play board games the same. I had expected to basically follow standard monopoly style rules of trading and making deals for property. Then I was introduced to what I will call "no-rules-trading." According to Juliet's family rules for this game, trades can occur any time, under any circumstance for any amount of property or money. If I feel like Juliet is losing, I can slip her $1000 under the table to keep her in the game. If I want to get a small piece of property to complete my set, I may as well end up trading my chances of winning for it.

Another rule which I hated the first two years was that if you land on someone's property and they forget to make you pay, you get away for free. Being someone who zones out occasionally during extended Spanish speaking conversations, I found my mind wandering often. I stopped making that mistake the first time Julian or one of them landed on my property with a "Skyscraper" (Like a hotel) and I lost out on $500 + for not reminding them to pay me. Screaming "Pagame" became my trademark among them. Another sometimes beneficial, oftentimes irritating trade deal was allowing the individual you trade with to get multiple free landings on your property. In the beginning it seems nice because you get what you want in exchange for them getting 5 free chances of landing there without paying. Then the game winds down and you find out that by giving Julian an unlimited pass to never pay if he lands on my Dallas property, and then realizing my only valuable property is Dallas, and we are two of three left in the game...well let's just say I kicked myself for that one.

So Triopoly in Mexico is the most extreme case, but there are plenty of other games with which I have experienced frustrating rule variations.

In my family during a game of Monopoly, if you landed on "Go" you got double the money. At another friend's house, I am handed $200 wondering where the other $200 is since I was relying on it for a future purchase. And so it goes.

We used to play dominoes a lot never truly knowing the real rules. I finally sat down with a guy from work a few months back who played dominoes by the real rules and was so confused I couldn't finish the game--he destroyed me.

Board games are fun and everything, but they can be equally stressful when adapting to new rules, if you are competitive like me. If Triopoly has taught me anything, it's that just because a new rule seems fun at first, doesn't always mean it will benefit you the entire game. In many cases it will be your demise. And then the obligatory kicking yourself for bad playing decisions.

Of course after a good night's sleep you will be all the more willing to take on the challenge again. And someday, maybe someday...I will beat Julian and Gary at Triopoly.... Wait, what was my point again?