SCREW YOU, PRETTY
BALLOONS

THE COMEDY OF MUNCHKIN

Joseph Scrimshaw

The famous German philosopher Hegel declared, “Comedy is negation!” To which the majority of other comic theorists replied, “No, it’s not.”

I believe all great comedy philosophers would agree Munchkin is a very funny game. In fact, I risk no hyperbole when I say Munchkin is one of the funniest of the three games I own. (The other games are Monopoly and Star Wars Monopoly.)

Obviously, I don’t own a lot of games, and I deeply regret that I wasted my early twenties getting an expensive liberal arts degree when I should have been buckling down and really playing the hell out of Dungeons & Dragons.

The one class I took in college that truly stuck with me was called Introduction to Comic Theory. Ever since I took that class, I’ve been hoarding laugh treasure, killing audience monsters, and leveling up as a writer and performer of comedy.

My professor (or comedy Dungeon Master) for Introduction to Comic Theory had a great phrase that would make an even better Munchkin card. He described the act of studying comedy as cracking open jokes by hitting them with a Million-Pound Expletive Hammer. He didn’t say “expletive,” because this was a liberal arts class, and anything goes, man. But you get the point.

This essay poses such questions as: Why is Munchkin so funny? Why does it want to be funny? Doesn’t Munchkin want to be taken seriously? Doesn’t it want to win dramatic awards like The Wire edition of Monopoly probably does?

Some, if not all, of these questions will be answered using the time-tested comic theories of philosophers such as Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, and some guy named Scrimshaw who openly admits to owning Star Wars Monopoly.

In other words, it’s time to whip out our Million-Pound Expletive Hammers and bang the expletive out of that damn funny game called Munchkin.

CONTRAST

Most comic philosophers agree that all comedy functions on contrast. Human beings are wired to laugh at two incongruous ideas smashed together. If you want to test this theory, go tell a three-year-old that the sound a duck makes is “moo.”

Most children will find this hilarious. Overly serious children will become violently angry that you would waste their time with this nonsense, then stomp off to watch The Wire. Either way, the comedy magic happens.

The comedy of Munchkin’s basic premise functions on contrast. The highest goals of Dungeons & Dragons – slowly building the narrative reality of your characters, carefully monitoring your dwarf’s hit points, spinning a grand tale of adventure – are smashed into the more honest goals proudly emblazoned on the front cover of Munchkin: Kill the monsters, steal the treasure, stab your buddy.

This also gives us our first peek into the purpose of comedy: catharsis. One of the many ways comedy provides pleasurable emotional release is by allowing us to express an otherwise difficult truth in a socially acceptable manner.

In this example, Munchkin allows us to say, “Okay, fine, you got me. I don’t care about my elf’s backstory or motivation. I don’t give a damn about the history of the forest we’re walking through. I just want to stab this stupid wizard in his stupid back and take his stupid wand because it will make me feel awesome.” In other words, the game lets us be honest that even when playing a potentially complex, sophisticated game such as Dungeons & Dragons, all humans take at least a little bit of glee in greed, mayhem, and feeling as powerful and potent as possible.

To research this essay, I set up a sample game of Munchkin with as much comic contrast as possible. I played a game with the following players:

My wife, Sara. Sara and I don’t own a lot of games, but we frequently play tabletop games with friends. Sara has alternately enjoyed and tolerated many hours of me relating the details of a Call of Cthulhu campaign. She is not particularly well versed in D&D lore, but she spends enough time at SF/fantasy conventions to be familiar with the basics.

Our friends, Jim and Dennis. Jim and Dennis are partners. Dennis is a lifelong gamer and, at the time of this writing, is in the middle of DMing an ongoing fourth-edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Jim, on the other hand, has never played Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, he admits to frequently forgetting the name of the game and referring to it as Bats & Basements. Jim is also a professor of abnormal psychology who loves Carly Simon and ennui.

Before we even started to play, Jim looked at the really rather small Munchkin rules pamphlet and said, “Oh, so many rules.”

Dennis asked, “So, this essay will be about theories of comedy?”

Jim then noted, “I fell down on the ice in front of a child yesterday. Maybe you could write about that. I mean, it’s such a ridiculous feeling to fall down as an adult. You’re standing upright and proper and then you start flailing around like an idiot. You know you’re falling and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

“That’s kind of what’s going to happen in this game,” I said.

“I also swore in front of a child while I was falling.”

“Swearing will happen, too,” said Dennis.

And so we began to play.

THE JOKING ENVELOPE

Before play begins in a violently funny game such as Munchkin, all combatants must first step inside Sigmund Freud’s joking envelope.

This is not as creepy as it sounds.

In Sigmund Freud’s book on comic theory, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, the term joking envelope refers to the idea that comedy is a form of packaging for ideas and emotions. In a larger sense, the term has come to express the social space in which we agree any idea has the potential for comedy.

Within the safe confines of the joking envelope, we accept that malicious or cruel statements are intended as humor.

For example, saying, “I am going to steal everything you own, you expletive-hat!” is a pretty friendly, run-of-the-mill thing to say while playing Munchkin.

It’s probably not something you want to say to the server when you walk into Chipotle to order a burrito.

Your friends at the Munchkin table are inside the joking envelope. The server at Chipotle is not.

The social protection of the joking envelope also extends to actions. Many Munchkin players don’t waste their time with petty verbal taunts. Instead they follow that age-old wisdom, “Talk softly and carry an Eleven-Foot Pole.” Then they direct their munchkins to beat their friends’ characters silly with it, because, of course, a large portion of the comedy inherent to Munchkin is in the screw-overyour-friends mechanics.

In a typical game of Munchkin, it’s hard to accomplish even the simplest task – say, defeating a Potted Plant with an axe – because your friends are so anxious to screw you over.

Subsequently, a player might shout out something like, “Dammit! I can’t accomplish even the simplest little task!”

This honest statement will be met with gales of laughter from the friends and loved ones gathered around the table with you.

Imagine the same scenario at your typical office job. All you want to do is turn your computer on so you can log in and start getting paid. Your friend walks up and unplugs the computer. You plug it back in, and you wait for it to start up. You reach for your keyboard and mouse. Your spouse shows up at your place of employment, rips the mouse out of your hand, throws it out the window, takes five dollars out of your wallet, and laughs at you.

“Why?” you would scream. “Why won’t you let me accomplish even the simplest little task?”

(I offer the above scenario to Steve Jackson Games to use, free of charge, should they ever want to release Munchkin Real Life Office Horror.)

Strangely, our game of Munchkin featured little to no friend-hosing horror.

Instead, in another example of comic contrast, my sample game of Munchkin proved to be shockingly friendly. Here are some of the great burns we shouted at one another:

“I’m sorry!”

“Was that okay?”

“I didn’t realize that would make you lose your Eleven-Foot Pole!”

“I keep hurting people when I don’t mean to!”

Eventually, the tide turned as Dennis, the experienced gamer, started to bring the hammer down. He pointed out to the other players that I was winning. “Stop being nice!” Dennis shouted. “This guy is on level eight! He is Mister Expletive Threat Prime!”

All laughed and nodded in agreement. It was true. I was Mister Expletive Threat Prime. I was not offended at being called this because I was inside the joking envelope.

I joined in the laughter because calling people names and screwing them over is fun.

Besides, a joke is just a joke, right?

In the bastardized words of Sigmund Freud, “Sometimes an Amazon with a Magic Missile is just an Amazon with a Magic Missile.”

And sometimes, it’s a great big, adult humor-type joke.

INNOCENT VERSUS
TENDENTIOUS HUMOR

Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious also argues that there are two distinct forms of humor: innocent and tendentious.

Innocent humor is simple word play – odd, surprising, amusing contrasts that are not trying to make a point or reveal a larger truth, but simply amuse with their light absurdity.

Individual Munchkin cards are great examples of innocent word play. The card “Broad Sword” gives the player a sword that can only be used by a woman, thus making a light, safe funny by contrasting the two meanings of the word broad.

There are often joyful visual jokes in John Kovalic’s artwork, too. On the card “Wandering Monster” from the first Munchkin set, the monster has a spacey look on his face and is casually whistling, while the brave Warrior seems consumed with fear. It’s a simple, effective, and hilarious contrast. We really don’t think of monsters whistling as they happily bounce down the dungeon corridors.

Our gameplay featured plenty of innocent humor. For added theatricality, I asked the other players to narrate their defeat of monsters with some fun action noises. Sara bested a level 10 Floating Nose with her third-level Elf Cleric, then made copious sniffing noises.

It was funny because my wife doesn’t usually make big honking, snorting noises at our dinner table.

She also added, “I was sniffling because it’s a nose.” This was more great innocent comedy, because, like, we knew that. Still, we all laughed.

Then, the darkness came again. Jim drew a door card. We all commented, “Wow! No monster in the room.”

Jim sighed and said, “The monster was me all along.”

Freud’s other comedy category – tendentious humor – is far more prevalent and potent. Tendentious comedy is any joke that has meaning; it’s a joke that is meant to expose some truth or cause cathartic laughter by saying something grossly inappropriate within the safety of the joking envelope. For example, a quip that really means: “I, Jim, as a simple human man, am a far worse monster than any I could find in a dungeon.”

Munchkin offers plenty of humor of the tendentious sort. Dennis, the D&D veteran, drew a card, roared with laughter, and said out loud, “Oh, that is funny.”

He then showed us all the “Lawyer” card. He was even more amused to see that the “Insurance Salesman” was such a high-level monster.

In a modern cultural context, calling a lawyer a monster isn’t too shocking, but it’s a perfect example of Freud’s classification of tendentious humor. It is not word play and it is not innocent. It’s a clear statement: Lawyers are just as evil, if not more, as a vampire, a ghoul, or – depending on which version of Munchkin you are playing – the unfathomable menace of Cthulhu himself.

For such cards to have their full effect, the audience has to get the complex intent and sort out the meanings pretty quickly. For some Munchkin cards, that also means possessing a solid knowledge of gamer culture. Dennis, for example, played the card “Bribe GM With Food.”

Dennis and I laughed.

Jim stared.

Dennis explained, “The GM is the game master. He’s the guy who runs roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons. The kind of game Munchkin is satirizing.”

“It’s a stereotype that a lot of gamers eat a lot of really crappy food while gaming,” I added.

“Is it true?” Jim asked.

Dennis and I nodded in a sage, meaningful, tendentious manner.

But tendentious humor is not just jokes that make a statement. They are also jokes that express indecent, uncomfortable, or potentially offensive ideas. A few Munchkin cards that gleefully wander into this dark side of the comedy dungeon include “Crabs,” “Pukachu,” and “Stoned Golem.”

A few turns after bribing the GM with food, I asked Jim to please make the combat noises when he defeated a monster with his Magic Missile.

Jim responded with a series of small groans, then explained, “That’s a little adult humor.” And we all laughed.

Because in tendentious comedy, a Magic Missile is always a great big, absurd, magical adult humor joke.

After Jim had destroyed an Undead Horse with a Magic Missile (and adult humor), it was once again my turn. I was very close to victory.

Until my wife screwed me over – and everyone laughed.

Why? Why was it so funny to have the joy crushed out of me?

As always with such deep, philosophical matters, the French have an opinion on this.

ENCRUSTATION OF THE MECHANICAL
ON THE LIVING VERSUS ELAN VITAL

The French philosopher Henri Bergson argues that all comedy arises specifically from the contrast between what he describes as encrustation of the mechanical on the living versus élan vital.

Élan vital, roughly translated as “the vital force,” refers to the inner spirit of humanity that makes one feel alive. Encrustation of the mechanical on the living reflects anything that holds that spirit back – repetitive ideas, repetitive chores, the repetitive beat of daily life, and, in a modern sense, the repetitive drone of technology.

Perhaps the greatest example of this weird French theory is auto-correct. Your human spirit wants to communicate the simple message to your mother, “I’m in line at Chipotle!” However, your iPhone encrusts your élan vital and insists on telling your mother that you are “in licking a chandelier.”

The simple comedy of contrast is at work here, but Bergson argues it goes deeper. He postulates that the more our pure human desires are crushed by an external, mechanical system, the more hilarity ensues.

If Bergson were still alive, he would immediately die laughing at Munchkin.

In the rules, this very funny joke is made more than once. One of the best examples is: if you don’t have a class card, you have no class.

Jim found this funny. He kept dryly saying to anyone who didn’t have a class card, “You have no class.”

For our game, it became Jim’s own little catchphrase.

Bergson would argue that catchphrase humor is another example of encrustation. Most catchphrases start out as actual funny jokes or incidents bursting with élan vital.

Repeated once, it’s a callback. Repeated a third time, it completes the arbitrary comedy “rule of three.”

But comedy (and humans playing tabletop games) love to break their own rules, so we keep repeating the same jokes until they are encrusted and unfunny. By the eighth time Jim said, “You have no class,” it was once again hilarious because it really shouldn’t be funny anymore and thus successfully recreated contrast.

Catchphrases that are shared across a large community – like the Munchkin cry of “Duck of Doom!” – collect meaning over time. Eventually, their humor functions on the basic contrast between the simplicity of the original statement and the ridiculous complexity of its history.

If you’re at a Star Wars convention and you shout “Han shot first!” everyone in attendance could write a 10,000-word essay on the history and meaning of that statement. If you walk back into that Chipotle you’ve already been kicked out of once today for saying something weird, and shout “Han shot first!” they will think you have aphasia.

Catchphrases are also funny because they often distract you from your main point, so let’s get back to Bergson.

In a larger sense, in the game of Munchkin, all we want to do is what it says on the front of the box: Kill, steal, and stab. All we want to do is follow our pure human desire to destroy monsters and become the most powerful person at the dining room table.

But the very game that allows us to pursue these fantasies of power also has a thousand obnoxious ways to screw us out of seeing them fulfilled.

For the last several rounds of our sample game, I was a level 9 Human Thief with a Huge Rock. I should have been all-powerful, but no! My loved ones found great comic joy in playing card after card to impede my glorious victory: “Curse!” “Out to Lunch,” “Steal a Level,” “+10 to Monster,” and even “Pretty Balloons.”

My deep, instinctual human longing for power was crushed by Pretty Balloons.

Of course, in the moment, I didn’t find it that funny.

Some might explain this by turning to Woody Allen’s quote of a famous line in Crimes and Misdemeanors: “Comedy is tragedy plus time.”

I say bull-expletive, Mister Allen, because my friends and wife thought my tragedy was pretty funny at the time.

In fact, I would argue that the joy of comedy is always immediate.

GRIMSHANK’S PARADIGM

My final comic theory is one that I pompously coined myself. If life were a Munchkin game, this theory would have been created by drawing the “Pull a Theory Out of Your Hat” card.

Grimshank’s Paradigm is this: Comedy repeats on itself.

This is not a fart joke, but it could be if you want to interpret it that way. I can’t control your thoughts. Yet.

Comedy functions on violence. It happens when expectations are broken and when contrasting ideas are smashed together. Successful comedy causes an explosion of laughter. In Munchkin, screwing over your friends kills them twice over: it elicits raucous laughter while allowing you to actually murder their characters.

Even though comedy functions through metaphorical violence, its purpose is pure, honest joy. When we cruelly laugh at our friend’s impotent attempts to defeat a Potted Plant, we are in that very same moment creating the joy of catharsis.

Munchkin, in particular, allows us to poke fun of ourselves as gamers. It helps us laugh at the instincts toward greed and power that we all share as flawed, classless level 1 Humans. When we steal certain triumph out of the hands of our loved ones, we aren’t just screwing them over, we’re also giving them the gift of laughter.

Comedy turns what should be petty and cruel into something beautiful.

That should be the end of the story. But comedy exists to poke fun at things like overly serious endings, so the cycle continues.

Grimshank’s Paradigm argues that comedy is a relentless, unstoppable monster that you can’t run away from, no matter what. Even when it allows us to reach the noble heights of healthy catharsis, it can’t resist the opportunity to make a smart-ass comment about the situation.

As a comedian, it’s tempting to obey the monstrous spirit of comedy – to create joy through mocking, then turn around and mock that joy.

In practice, however, it’s best to try to make your point, get a laugh, and leave your audience wanting more.

So it was in my sample game of Munchkin. I don’t win games very often. I thought it would be pretty awesome if I legitimately won this game, so I could write about it in an essay.

And I did.

I, Joseph Scrimshaw, a level 9 Human Thief, used a Huge Rock to crush a level 1 Lame Goblin.

I beamed with manly pride.

Then my good friend Dennis said, “I only let you win so you can say you did in your stupid comedy essay.”

We all laughed. We laughed much, much harder than if we had just played stupid old Star Wars Monopoly.

Thanks, Munchkin. Thanks, restless spirit of comedy. Thanks, friends.

And screw you, Pretty Balloons.

 

Joseph Scrimshaw is a comedian, writer, and squirrel enthusiast based in Los Angeles. He’s brought his geek-flavored comedy to the San Francisco SketchFest, Chicago Improv Festival, Jonathan Coulton’s JoCo Cruise Crazy, and more. He’s written for John Kovalic’s Dork Storm Press, RiffTrax, the public radio show Wits, and James Urbaniak’s podcast Getting On with James Urbaniak. Joseph’s podcast Obsessed has been featured as a “Staff Favorite” on iTunes and listed in the top 100 comedy podcasts. Joseph’s first book, Comedy of Doom, was released in July 2012, and his comedy and music album, Flaw Fest, entered the world in November 2013. His hit plays Adventures in Mating, The Worst Show in the Fringe, An Inconvenient Squirrel, and My Monster (written with Bill Corbett) have been performed all over the world. In his free time, Joseph wastes all his free time tweeting about not having enough free time.