1830: The Game of Railroads and Robber Barons

1830: The Game of Railroads and Robber Barons is a railroad operations and share trading board game based on an original design by Francis Tresham, first published by Avalon Hill in 1986 and later reprinted by Mayfair Games and Lookout Games. Two to six players act simultaneously as stockholders who buy, sell and trade shares in competing railroad companies and as company presidents who lay track, purchase trains and operate routes across a map of the northeastern United States to generate revenue and pay dividends. The tight interplay between personal share portfolios and the operating health of the railroads a player manages, with zero random chance elements and games typically running four to six hours, made the title's economic design highly influential. It is widely credited with establishing the modern eighteen-hundreds, or 18XX, genre of train and stock-market games that followed it, and it is also cited as an inspiration for the video game Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon.