MUNCHKIN BY
THE NUMBERS

Steve Jackson

Numbers are important! Without numbers, we could only count as high as we have fingers – which is, come to think of it, how many levels it generally takes to win Munchkin. And I could make an argument that if it doesn’t help you win Munchkin, it’s not really important after all. Then again, if we couldn’t count past 10, any time we fought a monster above level 9 we’d end up in a tie. And, as we all know, Warriors win ties. So Warriors would have an advantage, and the game would be unbalanced. We can’t have that, so numbers must be important after all.

So here are a bunch of Munchkin numbers for you, starting with:

Month and year I finished this essay: 11/2015. All comments and numbers are accurate as of that date. Since you’re reading this later, you can assume that many of the numbers are bigger. At least, I sure hope so!

THE EARLY DAYS

Year in which munchkin entered geek language as a term for the person who would do anything to “win” an RPG: 1983, more or less.

The term can be traced to a party game at a Pacificon involving Jeff Okamoto, Sandy Petersen, and others. (Google the phrase “Real Men, Real Roleplayers, Loonies and Munchkins.” Go ahead, do it.) This became an Internet meme when the Internet was still pretty much unknown outside labs and universities, and long before the term meme came into fashion. A lot of people posted their own ideas of what the Real Men, Real Roleplayers, Loonies, and Munchkins would do in various situations. (I contributed a few myself. . . .)

An example, taken from near the beginning of the file and so quite possibly among the very first ones:

Favorite Attack Style:

*Real Men* shout their war cry, and wade into battle.

*Real Roleplayers* parry, counterattack, and protect comrades’ backs.

*Loonies* throw their sword at opponent, then attack with scabbard and lunchbox.

*Munchkins* leap in with secret “twisted lotus” ninja decapitation strike.

Favorite Way to Die:

*Real Men* in battle, with boots on, going down swinging.

*Real Roleplayers* on deathbed, after lengthy dramatic farewell speech.

*Loonies* laughing while jumping into a portable hole, and carrying a bag of holding.

*Munchkins* Die? You’re kidding, right?

If you want to read more, the Internet is your friend!

Year in which card games took over everybody’s brain: 1993.

Thank you, Magic: The Gathering. While MtG wasn’t the first collectible card game, it was arguably the first really good one. It was certainly the first that most people heard of. Many players abandoned boardgames and RPGs in favor of card games around this time.

Years in which the collectible card game fad weakened, taking several game publishers and some distributors with it: 1995–1997, depending on your viewpoint.

Though Magic remained strong, and occasional hit CCGs continued to appear, the field as a whole weakened drastically. But noncollectible card games had increased in popularity along with Magic, and to this day they’re strong . . . and Munchkin is helping to keep them that way. That makes me happy.

Year in which I started writing the card game that would become Munchkin: 2000.

I thought that it would be fun to do a parody of bad dungeon crawls. The goal was to write a silly, fast-playing card game about killing monsters and taking their stuff.

Time I have saved so far in this essay by looking up release dates for my own games on Wikipedia and BoardGameGeek rather than walking across the office to the bookshelf: At least 10 minutes.

In a few generations, we will completely evolve away from the need for feet, and we will grow extra fingers for faster keyboarding, up until voice-to-text is perfected, at which point we will lose the need for all the fingers except one, which we will use to stab the power button when we need to reboot, which will probably be every few days just like it is now. But I digress. . . .

Year in which I first realized Munchkin would be a hit: Definitely not 2000.

I had no idea how big this thing would get. No idea at all.

Altitude at which many of the original Munchkin cards were written: 35,000 feet, more or less, on a flight from Austin to Phoenix to attend HexaCon 10.

I already had the rules drafted, but I needed a lot more cards! I took a stack of blank cards from Illuminati: New World Order on the flight, thought up cards, and wrote them down in blue Sharpie until my hand was tired. Then I dictated to Monica Stephens, who was in the next seat. Her cards looked a lot neater than mine. She also started a playtest tradition that continues to this day: she looked at the card text and tried, creatively and maliciously, to misread it . . . because that’s what the players will do!

Date and ZIP code of the first game of Munchkin ever: 7/14/2000, 85250.

We used those hand-drawn cards. Monica and I played with a group of the Men In Black (our company demo team), including cell leader Jessie Foster, at HexaCon’s hotel in Scottsdale. We had fun. A lot of games don’t survive the first playtest. This one came through with flying colors and lots of yelling and giggling.

Number of cards totally nuked in the first playtest: One.

The “Derby of Death Defiance” proved to be a nearly pointless piece of headgear, because all it did was keep you from dying, and dying was no big deal. I suppose we could put it back in with a big bonus, and the “don’t die” as a minor side effect....

Stock number: 1408.

The 14 meant small boxed games, and 08 came after 07. So, no, it was not a “significant” stock number. We had no idea that Munchkin would turn into our most successful line ever. If we had, it would have gotten a more interesting number, like OMG00001. (Sometimes we really do manage to assign a stock number that means something. Zombie Dice is 131313. The Designer’s Edition of Ogre is 1977, for the year the game was originally released.)

The one significant stock number in the Munchkin series: 1503.

That’s Munchkin Apocalypse. Can you figure out why it’s significant?

Retail price of the original game: $24.95.

Fifteen years later, it is still $24.95. The print runs have gotten so big that economies of scale have kept up with inflation. We will eventually have to raise that price, though, so go out and buy six copies now. Right now, do you hear me?

PRINT STATISTICS

Ship date of the first printing of Munchkin: 7/16/2001.

Quantity in the first printing: 5,000.

No, that wasn’t nearly enough. So the second printing shipped less than six months later: 12/3/2001. This time we did 10,000, and that wasn’t enough, either. So we kept ordering more copies.

Number of printings so far: 29.

That’s just the base game of Munchkin, and just in English.

Quantity in the largest printing of the basic Munchkin set: 130,000.

Last-minute editing note: As this book heads off to print, the 29th printing has arrived and is being shipped, and the 30th printing is on the schedule.

Number of languages Munchkin has been translated into: 17, with one more on the way.

Right now, it’s available in Chinese (both Simplified and Traditional), Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian. The Japanese and Korean editions are out of print at the moment. Czech is coming. Sadly, we don’t have it in Punjabi yet.

New fan group we’d have if we translated it to Punjabi: Six.

Number of different core sets – that is, individually playable Munchkin games with different themes: 18 as of this writing, with more on the way.

Total numbers of Munchkin games in print as of November 2015:

• 1,162,024 copies of the original game in English.
• 1,384,604 copies of other core sets (Zombies, Booty, and so on) in English.
• 3,121,439 copies of other Munchkin items (supplements, boosters, and so on) in English.
• 106,050 copies of Munchkin Quest and supplements in English.
• 1,851,164 Munchkin games, supplements, and everything else in languages other than English.
• 7,625,281 total of the above!

ART IS THE NOISE A SEAL MAKES

Number of cards John Kovalic has drawn: Over 5,000.

There was even a special card to commemorate John’s prolific pen. (I suppose nowadays, I should say, “his wondrous Wacom.”) The “Mystic Correspondence” card was the 2,007th one he drew, and he did it in 2007. Should we do another special one when he hits 10,000?

Number of custom cards I have made for fans at conventions with my own pathetic sketches or no art at all: Hundreds!

At one point, we really overdid this by releasing the promo cards “John Kovalic Draws a Wandering Monster,” which gives a bonus if John draws a monster on it, and “Evil Stevie Changes the Rules,” which, if I bescribble it with a rule, becomes official. Both of these have been a lot of fun for us, and both have led to serious hand cramps at autograph sessions, so now we control the distribution of those cards very tightly. But if you look at our group on Flickr (we’re SteveJacksonGames), there’s a photoset for “Evil Stevie Changes the Rules” – 73 photos of cards made over just five days at the Essen game fair in 2008.

As far as I know there is no gallery of the cards John has drawn for fans . . . which is a shame, because original Kovalic cartoons are a lot cuter than original Jackson smears.

Number of different versions of the Munchkin figure that have appeared on the box cover: Four, all drawn by John Kovalic.

The original “mean dot-eyes” version was a huge hit, but I was concerned that it might not allow enough scope for animation in a cartoon or computer game. So John created the “pointy eyes” version, which was on the box for a couple of printings. Then, for one printing, there was a sort of transitional version, and then the current “round eyes” character model. The “super deformed” version with the head exaggerated relative to the body was used on a Munchkin journal, not a box cover. (Flower, the Girl Munchkin from Unnatural Axe, got a makeover recently, too.)

Number of Munchkin games ever won by John Kovalic: Exactly one!

He plays a lot, but people always assume that because he draws the cards he must be some sort of Deadly Killer Munchkin, so they always team up on him. So he’s still looking for his second victory.

Weight of the Munchkin mascot costume: 68 pounds.

Similar to a sports team mascot, this guy, with several different people inside,1 has been a hit at various conventions. He went to Essen (where he just loved all the LARP weapons for sale) and PAX (where he played Guitar Hero like a pro). The costume now belongs to Pegasus, which publishes Munchkin in Germany, and there are rumors of a new one being created by another European translator. But wearing this heavy suit and then prancing around like a maniac is a hard, athletic job. So when you see the Munchkin at an event, wave!

PLAYING TO WIN

Number of cards in the Munchkin database: 6,218, though this number changes every few weeks.

We keep the database in Filemaker Pro. It has a record for every card we have ever published (as well as a few that we’re saving for later). Sets in progress have their own databases, which are merged with the main database after they get to print. Without these databases, we would go completely insane trying to avoid accidental duplication of card names and so on. (Of course, sometimes we duplicate on purpose,2 which is why if you have both Star Munchkin and Super Munchkin, you can be a Mutant Mutant.)

Number of doors and treasures in the basic Munchkin game: 94 doors, 74 treasures.

This number has varied a bit across different printings. A few years into the game, we found that we could save money by printing two 84-card sheets and using the same back design for each sheet, which meant that doors and treasures had to be even numbers. Later, it stopped mattering, so the door/treasure mix varies slightly between core sets, depending on how many really stupid ideas we have for each kind of card.

Number of different races, classes, loyalties, mojos, factions, and accents in all versions of the game: 88.

Yes, really.

Number of edible Munchkin items we have released: One.

The Munchkin Resurrection Cookie (2008) was a real cookie. It not only let you avoid death (which, as I noted, is not a terribly big deal in Munchkin) but also let you avoid any level loss or other bad stuff associated with death. Also, it was yummy.

What happened to most of those cookies: 8.

Number of drinkable Munchkin items we have released: Also one.

Munchkin Water (2007) was a promo item created for a GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas. It was a half-liter of perfectly good water, but more important, it gave the drinker a total combat bonus of +3. We had cases and cases of the stuff in the booth and were giving them away like mad . . . until the hotel came down on us and demanded that we stop. It turns out that they sell water for several bucks a bottle, and they don’t like anybody cutting in on their action.

Number of extra cards you start with when you wear an official Munchkin shirt: One.

The “promo items give you bonuses” gimmick has become integral to the game, at least as it’s played by the insane/devoted fans. We’ve been accused of demonic cleverness in getting you to buy extra stuff. It all started with the original Munchkin T-shirt, and the fact is, it was a random whim as the shirt was going to press, as was the meta-gimmick of increasing the bonus if the shirt was signed. But players thought it was funny, so we did it again and again, with more shirts, and bookmarks, and dice, and all kinds of silly stuff. Over the years, John and I have signed a lot of shirts, and Greg Hyland, Andrew Hackard, and Wil Wheaton now have shirt-enhancing powers as well!

Number of promo items that we ended up universally banning from tournament play: One.

The Official Munchkin Cthulhu Bookmark of Udder Ridiculousness, which lets the player bring his own Cthulhu Mythos book as a prop, is just too easy to subvert.

Maximum winning level in the game: You think that you win at level 10, right? Well, not always.

The card “Mine Goes to 11!” makes the winning level 11, or 22 in Epic games. The “Dungeon of Extra Effort” has similar effects. By the way they are worded, those two cards don’t stack, so you can’t use them together to make the winning level 12. But there’s nothing except our own discretion and good judgment to keep us from issuing a card that simply adds 1 to the current level required for victory. Heh, heh.

Farthest from home that I have ever played Munchkin: 8,624.3 miles, in Canberra, Australia.

Farthest from home that I have ever played Munchkin if you think about it like a munchkin: 4,200 miles, give or take, which would be the distance to Canberra if you measure straight through the earth.

EXCESSIVELY RANDOM STUFF

Number of major gaming awards won by the Munchkin series: Eight, as I count from our page at www.sjgames.com/general/awards.html, including the Origins Award for Best Traditional Card Game of 2001, when Munchkin was first released.

Number of major awards or other significant recognitions that Munchkin has received for its social and educational value: Zero.

Number of times somebody has said to me “I like that game!” when they saw me wearing my Munchkin shirt: Too many to count. It was amazing the first time it happened.

Who am I kidding? It’s still amazing! That’s one reason I like wearing Munchkin shirts.

Books written about Munchkin: One. You’re reading it. Hi!

Highest price ever paid for a Munchkin card: $1,031.78.

Munchkin has never been a collectible card game, and we have never deliberately created great rarity. But just once we permitted a convention to do a fully official Munchkin card. It was “Heart of the Anomaly,” a Star Munchkin promo created by Linucon 2004 in Austin, as a tribute to guest (and Munchkin player) Wil Wheaton. They didn’t print very many, and that was a long time ago . . . so when one appeared on eBay, the bidding went high. (And that one wasn’t even signed by Wil. If he signs the card, it gives an extra +1!)

Highest price ever paid by an individual to appear on a Munchkin card: $4,000, by Steven Dengler of www.dracogen.com, at a charity auction to benefit Child’s Play. Thanks, Steven!

There have also been several four-figure donations from groups of two or three bidders at Irish game conventions (which have an unmatched reputation for charity giving; for more on that, see Colm Lundberg’s essay in this volume) and the Lucca Comics & Games Show. Card auctions show up at various events, usually without warning, benefiting causes such as children’s hospitals. If you want a munchkin-y version of your face, or a friend’s, to show up on a card, this is the way to do it.

Number of Munchkin-themed weddings that we know about: Three, plus one proposal via homemade one-of-a-kind Munchkin card.

What the foil hat and socks are made of: 10.

FAN RECORDS

We can’t substantiate these. Who do you think we are, Guinness? But fans have written us to claim the following records:

Most successive school days playing Munchkin: 90.

Matt Ehler: “For a full semester, my mates and I played a minimum of one game of Munchkin a day, often two. This is 18 weeks of five school days per week.” (So, Matt, you were slacking off on the weekends?)

Most players in a Munchkin game: 18.

Jeff Kochosky: “A number of years ago, at a convention in CT (ConnCon), I ran a game of Epic Munchkin that had 18 players involved. We used every base set and expansion through Super Munchkin 2. I had to walk around the tables distributing the cards, because they couldn’t be kept in one place. The game lasted about 6 hours.”

Second-most players in a Munchkin game: 15.

John LaRoche: “It took place last year at the Fantasy Gaming Conclave . . . a massive four-table game that involved original Munchkin and Munchkin Cthulhu using dungeons for both. Portals that replaced a dungeon in play would cause that player to go to a different table. The first player at any table to reach level 20 would win for all tables. If 15 players isn’t a record, just wait until the FGC this year. I’ll have the Zombie dungeons to add to the fun!”

Youngest player: 4.

Neil McLellan: “I have played Munchkin with my two daughters, 4 years old and 5 years old . . . Daddy lost. The two girls, Hannah and Lana, shared a win due to Elven shenanigans.” (Neil sent unspeakably cute photos.)

Highest combat value in a monster stack: 156.

Adam Ford: “Yes, the monsters won.” (Former Munchkin Baron Lenny found a claim of 193 on a message board, but it was several years old and we could not confirm it.)

Longest game of Munchkin (with the same players): Seven hours.

Steve Mandel: “We played an all-sets, all-expansions Epic Munchkin game once. For six of us, it took seven hours, but someone finally got to level 20 and won.”

Longest game of Munchkin (with rotating players): 12 hours.

Scot Ryder: “I was a MIB when Munchkin came out and was heading to DragonCon that year. On Friday I started a Munchkin demo around 8 p.m. in the open gaming area. We played Munchkin. And played Munchkin. And played Munchkin. Players rotated in and out but the ‘demo’ lasted over 12 hours. It was then that I knew Munchkin was going to be a huge hit, though I couldn’t have anticipated how huge!”

SO HOW DOES IT ALL ADD UP?

I am so tempted to total all those “significant numbers” and claim that is the true meaning of Munchkin. But if the silly game adds up to a good time for you, I’m happy.

 

Steve Jackson has been designing games for almost 40 years and has no plans to stop. He may be blamed for Munchkin, Illuminati, the GURPS roleplaying system, Ogre, Car Wars, and Zombie Dice. He is either a citizen of the Internet or a Texan, depending on who’s asking.