Munchkin - The Card Game named after a D&D In-Joke named after a Politically Incorrect Aspect of a Film based on a Book about a Kansas Girl's Psychotic Episode. I think it's safe to say your mother has NEVER heard of this, and might well judge you for playing it. "Munchkin? Well, it's this... card... you know what, Mum? It's when you snort coke lines from the corpses of hookers."
But I'd heard really good things about it from generally reliable sources, so when I saw a box at the Thought Bubble Convention in Leeds, I decided to pick it up. When I'd get to play it was another matter though. With my scattered group of friends, I don't get a vast number of chances to play actual physical board-games apart from Christmas. And it's always Monopoly. I have a 2-year old copy of Carcassone that has been opened once, and never played.
Anyway, I was round at my cousins' home in Devon, we'd had a fairly intense day, for reasons which I won't be writing about here, and so I figured this might be a good way of getting our minds off things. So my sister, my two cousins and I sat down to test it out.
Of course, there was the inevitable "working out the rules" stage, the "arguing about the meaning of the rules" stage, the "realising you've got the rules wrong" stage and the "I'm losing to my little sister" stage, a necessary but painful stage that every big brother must learn to accept, at least if you want the game to continue past 5 minutes. But pretty soon we were hooked on the combination of ridiculous puns and devious machinations.
My favourite moment was when Felicity got brought down 2 levels by a concerted effort from our entire group to prevent her from winning. We got the full Shakespearean melodrama, the threatening that "if you're all against me, I'm not playing", and then the gradual talk-down after I pointed out that half the point of the game is to gang up on the strongest. Finally, I got to hear this classic line, "I'll play, if you don't treat me like I'm five... [pause] and I won't act like I'm five." And within 5 minutes, we were all laughing along again.
Another awesome moment was when Jo was cursed to wear a chicken on her head, and decided not to dispel it, because she liked the way it "looked". As her character was something along the lines of an elf-dwarf fighter-wizard wearing flaming armour, carrying a big rock, and accompanied by a singing and dancing sword, the chicken did add some much needed gravitas.
In the end, Alice, who'd been trailing the whole game, ended up with a character more powerful than the gods themselves, and annihilated the critter facing her, boosting her to level 10, and winning the game. And there was much rejoicing.
Here's what I like most about Munchkin. It's one of the few games which actively resists taking it seriously. You're building up a truly ridiculous looking character with phenomenal cosmic powers, and fighting enemies that range from D&D in-jokes to absolutely appalling puns. It's basically just there to make you laugh, argue and spend time with each other. And it did the job brilliantly.
And geeky or not, isn't that what games are for?
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"Hartley said that nothing reveals Humanity so well as the games it plays. Almost right. Actually, you reveal yourselves best in the way you play them" - Q, Star Trek: TNG
P.S. I literally spent 5 minutes thinking about what the title could be before realising what an obvious opportunity had presented it.
