While I was attending Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, a few brother seminarians and I had a long run of Monopoly tournaments, and we became quite adept at the game. Of course, my winning strategy was to always give up any and all properties to get Boardwalk and Park Place, buy a hotel, and hope someone hit the hotel before I went bankrupt...
I created this vector file (below) in Illustrator after many hours of path-tracing original Monopoly board art, my own hand-drawn designs, and some clipart. I was intending to print it on some cardstock and mold some actual pieces (like a biretta, a Liturgy of the Hours book, a pipe organ, etc.) to play the game, but never got around to that part before leaving.
(Click image to view larger).
So... I have had this file sitting on my desktop for over a year, and I thought it'd be best to simply share it. If someone wants, I can GPL the vector file so someone else can make a custom monopoly-like game without having to go through the Monopoly site and pay a ton of money.
[Edit: I am releasing my work (see attached Illustrator file below) free of charge, under the Creative Commons ShareAlike license. Please do with it what you will, but be sure to link back to my site or give me a shout out when you use it!]
Click to download: Seminopoly (Monopoly-like game board) - Illustrator Vector File
(you can also download the Community Chest) artwork separately)
Seminopoly by Jeff Geerling is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at www.jeffgeerling.com.
Update: Anne Dickson, of A.D. Design in Durango, Colorado, has sent me two more bits of vector artwork for custom Monopoly chance/community chest cards – click to download:
Comments
So...
Did you play by the REAL rules? ( Bet you don't know them. Most people don't! )
http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/monins.pdf
"BUYING PROPERTY… Whenever you land on an unowned property you may buy that property from the Bank at its printed price. You receive the Title Deed card showing ownership; place it face up in front of you. If you do not wish to buy the property, the Banker sells it at auction to the highest bidder. The buyer pays the Bank the amount of the bid in cash and receives the Title Deed card for that property. Any player, including the one who declined the option to buy it at the printed price, may bid. Bidding may start at any price. "
So... are you saying... WHAT?????!!!!!
To quote another blog...
Why Is Real Monopoly Better?
Sending un-purchased properties to auction has a number of benefits.
First, it speeds up the game, as it enables the quicker collection of a matched set of streets (and remember that it's only when players have collected sets, and can start building houses, that the game moves into its final phase).
Secondly, it makes the game much more interesting by massively increasing the interaction between players. Bluff appropriately and you could end up buying a property you really want for way below the market price, or trick another player into buying a property you don't want for way more than the market price.
Thirdly, it makes the game much dependent on skill, and your ability to trick, bluff and manage the other players."
ENJOY!
We did play by the official rules (in fact, one of the seminarians had the official strategy and rulebook for Monopoly, with a whole history of the game and the rules. It was kind of an addiction :)
Wow... nice catch! VERY few people know the real rules.
Designing a custom board for someone's birthday. This will make such a fun game night! Thank you for sharing this for free!! I also didn't know the complete rules. This will definitely speed up the game.
Whoa! Just ran across this in my Google Reader. I would definitely be interested in the vector file of this, if you don't mind sharing. Thanks!
Check above; the file is available for download :)
This is so perfect for a grade school game - thanks so much for the share!
Perfect vector map, thank you so much!
I was wondering if I can change the pink boxes that sorround every text, do you have any idea or is this just my computer playing tricks on me?
Also, only have access to one type of font, which is strange..
Once again, great work and many thanks!
Rita
To get rid of the pink boxes, you have to go to edit-preferences and then uncheck the boxes which say Enable Missing Glyph Protection, and Highlight substitute fonts. This is for illustrator.
Yikes! Awesome job!
I've dowloaded it so I can personalize it for my EFL lessons. Absolutely handy! Great job!
Thanks a lot for the great template! Came in very useful for a personalized birthday-gift!
Thank you for sharing your work, I'll be modifying it in order to make a timeline / game for history class in industrial design, here in Argentina. :)
Hi Jeff!
I realize it's been 8 years since you created this vector art of the Seminopoly board, and the link doesn't seem to work anymore. Any chance you still have it available? I have to create a custom monopoly game for a small vendor show, it's all internal fun. I'm. happy to credit/donate, etc... Thank you so much!
Kindest regards,
Jackie
All the links in this post work okay for me, still... what happens if you right click and 'Download file as'?
We are fighting a developer encroaching on our town property and this board will be the perfect background template to list our local streets. Thanks for sharing and your support. Hope we win the battle AND the right to keep our property natural for years to come. Cheers! KG from Brooklyn
thank you so much!
Thank you so much! I am using these for an office human-sized game :) thank you thank you thank youuuuu
Hello, does the file download still work? I can't seem to get it and it just comes up with a blank page....really want to make this as a gift for a colleague and your version looks the best! I guess the last person I can see who has used it posted 11 months ago, so it's possible it's gone now. Thanks for sharing anyway!
In my testing, it's working still. Did you right-click on the link and choose 'download file as'? If not it might try opening the .ai file in the browser, which displays nothing but a blank page.
Your work is great- thank you so much for sharing! I was able to download your image without difficulty, though I am not able to edit the file to personalize the property names. Any suggestions? Thanks!
To edit the file, you need to have Adobe Illustrator, or another vector graphics application compatible with .ai files.
Can't wait to try your file.
Thank you for sharing.
Jeff, I am very happy with what you have created here. You've done an excellent job! I'm certain there are many more people who have a custom monopoly game because of your efforts, and I hope you enjoyed the process as much as myself.
Such a great template, thank you very much for sharing it !! This helped me tremendously in creating our own game for our city (France)
Is there any chance you made a template for the playing cards? Thank you!
Sorry, don't have any other templates besides the ones linked in this post.
Hi there Jeff,
I just wanted to say thanks for sharing this amazing work. I am a teacher in Japan and I hope to use your work to create a new game for my students. I want the students to think about learning English as a form of Hero's Journey where the biggest thing they have to overcome is their fear of communicating. Having your work as a base will really help me to move things forward quickly and create a working prototype for the start of uni in 2 weeks time. I am utterly overjoyed.
Thank you so much for your kindness!
Best Wishes
Tim
12 years later and your files are still being put to great use. This document completely changed the game for me as I tried to make a custom board for a birthday. Thanks for sharing!
My son is giving speech at the national speech and debate tournament and he is talking about monopolies. He can use a prop to keep him on track (10 minutes with no notes) and we wanted to customize the board. When I tried to edit in adobe acrobat pro I could open it but not edit. Im bummed. Any ideas? Do i need a special vector program??? M
This file requires Adobe Illustrator, or a program (maybe Inkscape?) that can open or convert .ai files.