Inbox: Munchkin

Inbox features items that I have recently purchased or received.

One of America's best game designers is Steve Jackson, responsible for the design of the pen-and-paper roleplaying system, GURPS, as well as the fantastic card game, Illuminati, released during they heyday of the collectible card game craze. Munchkin, released in the early 2000's, is another game by Steve Jackson and quite possibly their most popular one yet, thanks to its comical tone, but engrossing multiplayer mechanics.

Initially designed as a send-up of pen-and-paper roleplaying games, gamers, and its associated culture, the main game features each playing taking the role of a dungeon adventurer (starting as a Level 1 Human with no class). Together, 3-6 players enter the dungeon, kick down doors, fight monsters, loot treasure and work with and against each other to this end. The object of the game is to be the first player to reach level 10. Levels are gained by defeating monsters, earning the levels in treasure and in selling equipment, but the last level may only be earned by defeating a monster. As the players encounter baddies, they can ask for assistance, bribing other players with treasure or appealing to their goody-goody nature (if they're elves) and likewise, players also frequently draw a number of "door" cards which enable them to cause trouble for each other in order to keep them from winning.

Like any card game, mulligans do happen and if the shuffled deck doesn't distribute card types well, then play can really slow down a lot. But, its inherent nature as a card game is its main weakness. Otherwise, the game is tactically simple enough that most gamers and even many non-gamers can get into it quickly after a couple demonstration rounds, but giving so many opportunities for players to help and foil each other makes every game unpredictable, while still giving the rules enough space to permit enough planning as so the game isn't entirely chaotic. I really appreciate how the game creates both a desire to cooperate with other players, as almost no player could survive without the occasional intervention of another player, but gives plenty of opportunities to backstab another player or tear them down just when they think that they might win.

The cards are published on quality cardstock that requires a little breaking in, but are durable with a strong matte finish. The latest (19th) printing takes the cards another level, including some revisions to cards to make their effects clearer and giving all the cards a color makeover. The included decks aren't enormous, so a six player game could possibly see all the cards run out. The included rules are printed in nice large print on a foldout. Sometimes the rules aren't exactly clear and it's not entirely easy to find out where certain rules lie on the page, so the instruction page could be better organized. In the case of who plays first and what order the players take turns, the game takes a comical approach, suggesting that the players roll the dice and argue about what it means. Fortunately, there is some good amount of online support, including an FAQ that resolves some questions that might come up while gaming as well as forums where a befuddled gamer can seek advice from more experienced players.

At this point, Munchkin is Steve Jackson Games' most popular product and so those that don't get their fill from just the first box have seven expansion sets to purchase. The game also has a number of spin-offs, featuring different themes from the standard set's medieval fantasy, like Space Munchkin, Munchkin Fu and numerous other themes. These spin-offs can largely also be mixed into standard Munchkin, with a few rules adjustments.

Overall, the game is a lot of fun, perhaps reaching its best point at 4-5 players. Again, a bad shuffle can really kill the momentum of the game and so the game does have that weakness, but its quality of player interaction, comical theme and solid game mechanics provide plenty of moments to enjoy with your friends (and enemies). I would imagine that standard Munchkin would be most enjoyable to those who have some background in medieval fantasy role-playing games (computer and console gamers included), due to the tropes involved, but the comedy is frequently broad enough that non-roleplayers. Some of the other Munchkin spin-offs might prove to be more accessible as well, depending on the background of the players. Highly recommended. 8/10.

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Reviewing Multiplayer Games

So, I have a few board games and card games that I've played and/or received recently and want to write about them, but I realized that I never really set up a framework for evaluating the quality of interaction, not just between the player and the system, but how the system engenders play between players. Multiplayer, insofar as games are concerned is a broad field and encompasses a number of different modes of play.

Competition, Cooperation, & Everything In-Between

One distinction that needs to be made is between cooperative and competitive play. Many games have one or the other, but many games also possess a combination of both. An example of purely cooperative play would be where a group of players work together to win against the game. One example would be a typical pen and paper roleplaying game like Dungeons and Dragons, where a group of players are largely working together to surmount obstacles in a story, weaved by the dungeonmaster. The dungeonmaster's role isn't competitive because she or he doesn't "win" if all the character's die. It's more of a very hands-on facilitator, like the role of the narrator in a game of Mafia. Likewise, a totally competitive game would be like a game of singles tennis, where two players test each other's physical skill against each other.

Team-based competitive play is the obvious example of cooperative and competitive interaction, like in the children's outdoor game, Capture the Flag. There are also more interesting cooperative/competitive hybrids, such as the dynamic found in The Legend of Zelda: The Four Swords, where players have to work together to complete dungeons, but each are ranked individually by score and so there's a tension between helping each other in order to win together and trying to outdo each other in order for individual glory. On the flipside of the coin, many board and card games, like Monopoly, encourage trading and cooperation but with the idea that eventually only one person will win, leaving alliances fragile and temporary and trade being a measure of who is really getting the better deal when working together.

There Is Art in Interaction

Any actor is aware that the creation of the artifice between two actors is art in itself, an expression between two role-players colliding in a single work. While I'm not necessarily focused on gaming-as-art (although it certainly can be, has been and will continue to be), that quality that emerges between two players of a game, an exchange between the players, when done well, can be moving, pleasing, and possibly enthralling. As such, when evaluating multiplayer games, I think it's somewhat important to focus on the quality of the interaction. If it's merely trying to top a high score on a leaderboard, like on Bejeweled Blitz for Facebook or topping distances in a hammer throw on the track and field sport, I don't really want to consider that any sort of actual multiplayer, but rather, social single-player gaming as there are no mechanics in the game that demand some interface between players.

I suppose, then, when a game's primary mode is multiplayer, I will have to consider the depth of the interaction. Different games have different degrees of multiplayer. For example, in the card game "War" (one of my most reviled games), the two players interact and are competing, but the decks are ultimately stacked and the players are merely turning over cards, iterating a routine and I would consider it poor multiplayer. I feel like good multiplayer keeps you engaged with the other player(s), whether indirectly or directly and the mechanics of the game force you to need to interact with them. So, for that reason, while I find multiplayer battle Tetris to be a lot of fun, its multiplayer aspect is a little limited since merely excelling at playing regular Tetris is what sends lines to your opponent. Super Puzzle Fighter II improves on this regard by providing mechanics to reduce an "attack" by the other player and the game isn't built on playing solo, but rather wiping out an opponent. Both games force you to play better solo because the other player adds a ticking time bomb to your solo game, but Puzzle Fighter requires that you be aware of what your opponent is doing more. Both might be fun, but Puzzle Fighter II has deeper multiplayer.

And, I guess that's how I'm going to be looking at multiplayer aspects of games, whether the game is both single and multiplayer or exclusively multiplayer. I'm not going to say that a game is better or worse by having shallow multiplayer or deep multiplayer--per se. I don't think a value attribution need apply, except insofar as how well the multiplayer succeeds in engaging the participants and how balanced it is. After all, multiplayer gaming is about sharing an entertaining experience--if the game has multiplayer hooks that force players to interact at deep levels, but is otherwise boring, it would be a failure as a game.

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