Game Design: In-class Board Game Experience - Munchkins

This week in class we got the opportunity to play in groups on board games and card games. It was a nice chance to try a new game we had never seen before and I was pleasantly surprised by how fun the experience was.

Our group played the game “Munchkin”, a card game for 3 to 6 players that resembles a simplified RPG game. It contains a witty sense of humour as the overall tone of the game to make it a pretty funny and engaging experience. It does not have all the complications of a super complicated high profile RPG system like Dungeons and Dragons, and allows it to be learned in a much smaller amount of time. Despite the simpler nature of the game, with the 6 people in our group, it still took an hour and a half to play and we weren’t even finished at the time we had to stop.

The basic outline of the rules is, you gain levels by defeating monsters or using treasure cards. You pick up from a “Door” deck of cards which contain monsters, classes to change your characters, spells of various effects. There is a “Treasure” deck of cards you pick from when defeating monsters, which has items to help level up, boost your attack power in battle, allow you to manipulate other players or the monster you are facing, etc. There are many cards I am not even aware of yet since we did not go through the whole deck. The goal of the game is to get to level 10. I won’t go through all the rules but these are essentially the basics. A full read out of all the rules is available here or by trying out the game yourself! It’s actually really fun and easy to get the hang of once you’re into it.

A Class card (left), and items that can be used or sold. (Middle and Right)

Ruleset: The rules of Munchkin

Major observations about the game

5 Things I really enjoyed about the game

• Humorous, the game does not take itself seriously. It uses a variety of jokes in the names of the cards, not to mention the cards themselves can be silly. Such as fighting against lawyers. Most of the cards contain humour in a form like this.
• Similar to an RPG game. You gain levels, increasing in strength with every level. There are races and classes to become that give you special powers and bonuses and items to help give you more bonuses or change the tide of battles or manipulate other players.
• Relatively simple system. The system itself is a very simplified version of an RPG system but still retained that same RPG vibe. It makes it really easy to get into after playing once or twice. Where as most RPG systems take numerous hours to fully understand the systems.
• Very active and fast. Once you’re fully engaged, it won’t be long before it’s your turn to progress. Turns can end very quickly or have you fight a monster suddenly making you make some tough decisions on how you will go about winning, worrying about not only the monster in front of you but other players who might help or harm you. 
• You can still participate in the game during other peoples turns. Even if you’re not currently in play, there are dozens of different cards that you can use to help or harm other players. You can participate in other peoples battles, helping them but bargaining for the treasures they receive from killing the monster. You can curse or backstab players to make their chases of defeating the monster slim to none.

An example of the humour of Munchkin

5 things I sort of disliked about the game, because no game is perfect

•    Can take a bit of time to get used to the rules. It’s not the simplest game to get a hang of. While some games you can play the first time I understand almost right away, it can take a few turns before everyone can finally understand fully what they are doing in the game.
•    Leveling up against monsters. For some monsters it is much to easy to level up, especially when it becomes late game. If there is a level 1 monster that you fight early on, perfectly understandable that you would level up normally. But someone who is level 9 by late game and only has to fight such a weak creature makes it pretty simple for them. But of course other players can still do things to affect their fight and make it harder.
•    Item system. Though you can sell items, it is only to gain more levels. It makes the concept of gold fairly nonexistant. I am sure there would be a way to incorporate a proper money system without getting too complicated.
•    A player may fall behind early in the game and never catch up. It seemed very difficult if you were a low level and behind to make your way back up. Due to the nature of the drawing of monsters, it was common for the low level characters to fight monsters that were too high a level. That or you would get screwed over by the other players. The other players can control how you progress so easily if you are a low level that you may never recover if they are unfriendly to you.
•    Some classes seem a little unbalanced. Such as the thief class, which allows you to backstab other players for only the price of a single card. Many other classes such as the wizard only have a abilities that help you run away, which is for the price of even more cards. Things get particularly crazy when there are 4 thieves playing at once.

The thief, imagine 4 of them at once, all of them backstabbing as you try to combat a monster

One thing I would have designed differently about the game

Since there were things I disliked about the game, there must be something I feel that could be changed for the better, and what I feel they could change is…

Changing the item system

As of right now, the item system works as follows. If you sell items, and they total up at least 1000, you will gain a level. If you have say, 2000, you will gain 2 levels. However if you have any excess money you will lose any of it during the sale. This system is pretty simple and eliminates the need for cards to keep track of money. However I believe there should be more options rather than simply focusing on gaining levels.

What I believe is the best way without having to add chips to count as money for currency, is to add further options in selling. Perhaps if you sell up to 500 gold worth of items, you are allowed to take one treasure card. It makes me feel like I am actually selling items to a store and buying new ones, a pretty important aspect of RPGS. Further options could be incorporated, such as including the cost of gold in cards you pick up, so that you might have to sacrifice cards of greater value to access the benefits of an enormously useful new card. 

An item and it's worth in gold pieces

There are many possibilities they could have pursued with the use of gold but they didn’t really pursue it, which I find to be a missed opportunity. In any case, any excess money that you didn’t use in purchasing items or performing whatever task would be gone once again. This way, you won’t have to keep track of how much gold you currently have, keeping the simplified system while adding new options to help further the dynamic of gold.


Your thoughts...


To anyone reading this, these are my experiences with the game. What I generally liked or didn't like but I am curious of the opinions of those who are familiar with the game or at least the gist of it after having read this.


Do you agree with what I liked about the game? Do you think those are things you actually hate about it? Do the things I dislike feel to you like essential parts of the game? Even if you agree I would like to know since it means another person in this world who likes the game the way I do. Anything and everything, sound off in the comments!