“Kill the monsters. Steal the treasure. Stab your friend.”
These three principles, stamped on the box of the dedicated Munchkin card game, are a fairly accurate assessment of what to expect when your group of 3-6 players sits down to play a game. Munchkin is essentially a dungeon crawling style RPG, only without the pencils and paper, the heavy rulebooks, and the RPGs. Much of the seriousness is removed as well, as nearly all the cards are filled with satire lampooning traditional D&D-style games. Humor that is only based on brilliantly illustrated letters by John Kovalic, best known for his Dork Tower comic series.
So if you take all that boring stuff out of an RPG, what’s that leave you ask? Namely, a faster-paced game packed with monsters, loot, and experience levels. In a race to be the first player to reach level 10, you and your friends will team up to take down bigger monsters, while fucking each other on a regular basis. The comic nature of the game helps quell resentment when a player begins to feel annoyed, but the right crowd could still find themselves in heated debates over the occasionally ambiguously worded letter. However, don’t take it too seriously. Munchkin publisher Steve Jackson Games certainly doesn’t, with rules such as “Any dispute in the rules must be resolved with heated discussions with the game owner who has the last word” and cards like Cheat that allow you to break the established rules. and equip items. that you normally couldn’t.
The game is played with two different types of cards, gate cards and treasure cards. All players start out as level 1 humans with no “class” (hehehe) with two cards of each type in hand. A player’s turn begins by entering a new room in the dungeon by “kicking the door” (drawing a face-up door card). Door cards often consist of curses / traps, monsters, or cards that modify the player’s class or race. If the player is not forced to go into battle by drawing a face-up monster, they can go “look for trouble” and choose to fight a monster by playing one of their hand. There are a wide range of monsters, ranging from a level 1 potted plant to a level 20 plutonium dragon. However, be careful not to bite off more than you can chew. Rival players can make your fight more difficult by playing cards on your monster that give it bonuses like Enraged or Intelligent, increasing its fighting power.
Defeating a monster in combat will give you an experience level and some treasure. Treasure cards are usually items that modify your combat rating, such as the Mace of Sharpness or the Great Rock, or special cards like Bribe the GM with food, which allow you to level up immediately. If you cannot defeat the monster, you will have to roll the die to run away. If you fail to escape, you will be forced to face the bad things, consequences of your defeat that are unique to each monster. Lose a fight up to Floating Nose level 10 and you may only lose one level. Take on a level 18 Bullrog and you will fail and possibly get killed, forcing you to start over at level 1 and draw a new hand of cards. If you are in a difficult situation, you can try to convince someone at the table to help you in battle, adding their battle rating to yours, but they are not likely to help you for free and you may need to watch your back.
The game is published by Steve Jackson Games, a company that has created and published a large number of card, board and role-playing games for over 30 years, including Car Wars, Chez Geek, and GURPS (Universal Role Playing System). generic). Since its original publication in 2001, Munchkin is by far one of SJ Games’ best sellers. Not surprising as it is such a fun and fun game and good for small to medium groups. In addition to the multiple expansions, there have also been various spin-offs such as Munchkin Conan, Munchkin Zombies, The Good, The Bad and the Munchkin with a western theme, and the upcoming Munchkin Apocalypse. Various Munchkin titles are available today from your local Slackers, and according to SJ Games, all derivatives and expansions are compatible with the original Munchkin base game.