Board Game Analysis – Munchkin Pathfinder

Introduction

During five weeks the class is divided into groups. The groups shall then play several board games and analyse the core system and components of the board game to gain a better knowledge on how a system works outside of a video game. The purpose behind this assignment is to see strengths and similarities in board games and video games as well as learning how to develop a stable system.

The first game team seven chose to play was a game called Munckin: Pathfinder. Pathfinder is a well established brand in the role-playing market and the developers of the game Munchkin developed an edition of Munchkin with a pathfinder theme.

Munchkin

Munchkin is a turn-based card game where players compete to reach level 10. The key components of Munchkin is the Door Cards, Treasure Cards and the dice. The Door Cards has several possible functions. The main function is the monsters, to gain levels in Munchkin the player must defeat a monster or receive a level up card from a treasure card-pile. A monster is defeated when the player has more damage than the monsters level. In Munchkin, level + damage boost from items = your total battle damage. After defeating a monster the player gains a level and may collect the number of treasure the beaten monster left behind. In the treasures the player may find battle bonuses or items that will be useful during the play through. The function of the dice is to give the player a small chance of escaping a monster that has more damage than the player. Whenever that situation appears the player may recruit other players to join the fight and add their damage to defeat the monster and then spilt up the loot as they see fit, however if the monster is unbeatable or that no one joins the struggle the player may choose to roll the dice for either a five or a six to avoid the monster-card’s bad stuff; bad stuff is the term for whatever happens to the player if he or she can’t defeat and fails to run away.

Round 1

The first round the team played ended up being more about learning the game instead of analysing it. But after a few turns all the participants started to get a hang of how the game worked and that was when Munchkin’s strongest mechanic kicks in, the human player. Whenever a player got to a high level there was always someone trying to sabotage. It was everything from throwing special curse cards against the player or adding additional monsters to a fight. This was also where a few of Munchkin’s problems occurred as well, when in a fight the player’s damage level is item buffs and his or hers level combined. When other players began tossing debuffs, curses and more monsters into a fight it became hard to keep track on the fighting sides damage levels, luckily one of the players had an android app that eased the calculating.

The other problem were the cards themselves, to get to the problem of them a couple of example cards are going to be listed:

Hobbes Goblin                                  HemoBoglin

BlogGoblin

Now, theses name are humorously named but the issue with it is that almost every monster or for that reason any other card has a special description that constantly interrupts the gameplay because a player has to read what it does in order to understand its strengths and weaknesses. And because of the descriptions some players decided to read but not tell which ended up with even more slow-downs. This made the first round take about one hour and 45 minutes. By the end of the game however most of the players had gotten the hang of explaining the mechanics of the cards which eased the turns.

To sum it up Munchkin’s strength is not within the game itself but instead of what it makes the players feel. During a play-through you will experience the joy of getting levels and useful cards but you will also experience the feeling of loosing everything you have worked for when a player or players gang up to stop you from levelling up. Which triggers the revenge feeling for the player affected, so when someone else is going past you in the level system you will do everything to stop him or her. So the greatest aesthetic feel of Munchkin is schadenfreude, because of the consistent back-stabbing the game becomes some of what balanced aesthetically since everyone is trying to stop everyone.

The weakness of Munchkin is as mentioned above, that it takes quite a while until the game runs smoothly because of the many variations of cards with their own strengths and weaknesses. But the game needs the diversity as well because the game would become rather uninteresting with just a few cards. The variety also opens up for many turning points throughout the game but sacrifices a smooth early game because of it. The other weakness Munchkin has that many other card based games have is luck, if you are lucky you’ll receive great cards right away and out-level your competitors quickly but luck can also work against you in late game so the weakness doesn’t lie with Munchkin exclusively but rather with cards games at large.

Round 2

This round went much faster, there were only a few interruptions to read a card’s descriptions. The largest difference in this game round were that even though the cards are mixed and cut the person who won the previous round got a lot of negative attention from the other players, even while he or she was at a low level.

During this round the team realized that one could sell items in game to gain level. Each damage-item in Munchkin has a certain gold value. If the value combined or single are over 1000 gold the player may sell the item(s) to increase one’s level, however the only way to reach level 10 was to defeat a monster.

This became a new sort of system in the game, mainly based on the risk and reward system, you could keep your items and gain various combat bonuses or risk them and sell them to be rewarded with a level. The risk is both that you loose damage but also the risk that another player might throw a level down card at you.

Worth noticing here is that during a play-through a player may at any time play item buffs or curses. The only thing you actually have to wait for is to fight a monster, everything else can be played while it is another player’s turn.

This had both a positive effect and a negative effect on the pace of the game since it does not require the players to wait until their turn before they can play items. However it makes it hard to keep track on the player’s active battle damage but when the team played the game everyone told the person with the Munchkin app when they had increased or decreased their damage.

Round 3

Round three was the first time one of the team members played Munchkin and it was here where another strength of Munchkin was shown, it was very easy to introduce a new player to a already experienced group. This was because of the knowledge of the various cards by the seasoned players. When the new player wondered about anything in the game a player could almost always answer the question instead of referring to the over complicated rule pamphlet. What makes the pamphlet hard to read is that there are information scattered everywhere throughout three pages, the best way is to read the ground rules and the use the pamphlet as a encyclopedia since it was hard to remember all the rules when playing the game.

Interpreted target audience

As mentioned above the game focuses a lot on the human feelings of jealously, greed and schadenfreude but the game eases the progress of introducing a new player to a already experienced group of players. Along with the comical and satirical art work of the cards and the box the audience for this game would probably be the occasional board game player or players curious about board games but have not really dared to plunge into one of the larger titles available on the market, a round goes on for about a hour so the game is excellent to play at small parties.

Munchkin Pathfinder seems to be marketed towards a male audience. This is mainly based on the art work on the box, the cover feature a huge dragon, a male and a female. The art work is rather simplistic but the creators have chosen to over-sexualize the female’s anatomy which is rather weird since the gameplay does not appeal to any specific gender, why alienate a part of the audience by using an artwork that might be offensive.

Conclusion

Munchkin’s greatest strength is in the aesthetics, it really makes the players focus on back-stabbing each other. It does this by having one goal throughout the game; get to level 10 before your friends, however there are a mixed feeling about this goal, you never really want to be in the first place because then everyone will target you with monsters and curses. This is another example of Munchkin’s risk and reward system, you might want to be in the lead but then you are taking the risk of being in everyone’s target sight.

Munchkin does a great job at forcing the players to take bald moves but it also is great for players to play mind games with their opponents in order to make them play all of their offensive cards at another player.

The problem the game has is the large variety of cards, it takes a while until your play group will get a smooth gameplay. Another problem is that the card game relies on the players rallying against each other a bit too much, I can see the game becoming a bit stale if you are playing it with strangers, the number of back-stabbings and the whole mind game would be decreased. Which is rather troubling since the aesthetics are Munchkin’s greatest strength.

So go play Munchkin with your close friends or someone you really hate.