The world’s least surprising D&D crossover was announced on September 8. Munchkin, the dungeon-delving board game you haven’t played since 2009, is getting a series of 5.5e books. Produced by Canada’s Lynnvander Studios, it begins crowdfunding on Backerkit in October.
Like D&D, Munchkin is a staple gateway game. Many hardcore board gamers were first introduced to the hobby by Steve Jackson’s silly dungeon crawler. It’s one of those games that everyone seems to have played (again, much like D&D). It’s also, infamously, not very good.
Tabletop tastes have moved on since Munchkin was published in 2001. The original is now seen as procedural and poorly paced. That hasn’t stopped Munchkin establishing itself as a household name, however. We’ve had more than 25 spinoffs already, including Munchkin Cthulhu, Munchkin Marvel, Munchkin Zombies, and Munchkin Rick and Morty. Seniority, it seems, still counts for a lot.
Now, Munchkin celebrates its 25th anniversary with yet another spinoff. As the Backerkit page puts it, “Munchkin 5.5e Ye Olde Rulebook is a sourcebook and adventure book for the tabletop RPG you’ve been pretending to play correctly”. This core rulebook features four new species (including playable Mimics) and new subclasses like the Oath of Killjoy Paladin and the College of Nihilism Bard.
We’re getting a second book with a pre-written adventure, The Deadliest Dungeon. Plus, there’s plenty of spells, feats, cursed items, and a “pun-spiration” system, which I’m assuming is free Inspiration for anyone who makes god-awful puns. There’s also a “cheeky cheating” system that aims to emulate the back-stabbing cruelty of the original board game.
Here’s where I’m getting concerned. D&D is a co-op game, albeit one that’s often mistaken for a game of players-versus-DM. Or, if you’re playing with inconsiderate shitheads, player-versus-player. When players stop co-operating in D&D, things fall apart. The story struggles to progress. People leave the session with a sour taste in their mouth.
Munchkin is a board game that encourages the kind of ‘it’s what my character would do’ behavior that’d get you banned from a regular D&D table. In a party game with sparse rules, that meanness is a ‘take that’ moment played for laughs. In D&D, it sounds like a logistical nightmare.
Perhaps Lynnvander Studios can toe that line deftly, but I don’t know enough about the studio to be sure. Its back catalog mainly seems to be licensed board games: Evil Dead 2: The Board Game, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game, Reanimator: The Board Game, and so on.
You can find out more on the Backerkit page. Or, if you’d like to share your own piping hot takes on this crossover, you can spill the tea in the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
