Believe it or not, Monopoly the board game started off that way:

The history of Monopoly can be traced back to 1903, when American anti-monopolist Lizzie Magie created a game called The Landlord’s Game that she hoped would explain the single-tax theory of Henry George as laid out in his book Progress and Poverty. It was intended as an educational tool to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies. She took out a patent in 1904. Her game was self-published beginning in 1906.

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According to an advertisement placed in The Christian Science Monitor, Charles Todd of Philadelphia recalled the day in 1932 when his childhood friend Esther Jones and her husband, Charles Darrow, came to his house for dinner. After the meal, the Todds introduced Darrow to The Landlord’s Game, which they then played several times. The game was entirely new to Darrow, and he asked the Todds for a written set of the rules. After that night, Darrow went on to utilize it to distribute the game himself as Monopoly. Darrow used oil cloth to create a game board which is now in the collection of The Strong National Museum of Play after a $146,500 bid at Sotheby’s in 2010.