FOREWORD

WHY I LOVE TO DANCE
IN PANTS MACABRE

Ed Greenwood

In the game of life, some of us are gamers.

Yes, those people in jeans and T-shirts – or, ahem, costumes – who sit around playing games.

We love our roleplaying games. And some of us really love games that parody them, that let us laugh at ourselves. Laugh at those other gamers, I mean – the immature, play-to-win “munchkin” sorts, not us, oh no, nothing to see here, ma’am, please just move along . . . no, a little farther, thankyouverymuch.

Anyway, this flood of love brings many of us inevitably to Munchkin.

A parody game. That can also be played as one of the most competitive card games going. (Move over, Crazy Eights, and put away those shinguards, bridge players.) A game that inspires ardent devotion and the purchase of a seemingly endless number of expansion sets that just add to the fun, not to mention the standalone Munchkin variants that skewer other genres, to say nothing of the Munchkin boardgame and, of course, T-shirts and shot glasses and –

Why, yes, I did just say “shot glasses.”

We love the game enough not just to argue over the rules – all gamers argue over almost every rule in nigh every sort of game, including, my police officer friends tell me, the so-called rules of life – but also to have the rules major-league revamped in the Great 2010 Changeover. (Which included “fixing” a too-powerful card called, our fellow munchkins help us – and, yes, that was a Munchkin-subtle joke, there – “Kneepads of Allure.”) We love the game enough to talk about it for hours on end.

In fact, let me tell you about the time my –

All right, I can see your eyes glazing over. That tells me you’re a gamer. Non-gamers haven’t learned how deadly what follows those words can be unless they’re married to a gamer, or best friends with one. Then they know what that lead-in promises, but also just how dreadfully important such stories are to the gamer telling them. They also have a coping strategy: You Had To Be There, yes, but just keep smiling and nodding and saying “Uh huh” and asking breathlessly, “So what did you do then . . . ?” Eventually the earnest teller will run down and you can flee. (Always have an escape route planned in life, whether you need to sneak out of a mind-numbing office cubicle so you can feel fresh air on your face, or so you can spend quality time with the pet African elephant you’re not supposed to have, or so you can avoid the boss when he comes looking for a scapegoat with that look in his eyes.)

Anyway, let me tell you my “about the time my” story because – I promise! – it’s not about my four-armed, two-headed, prehensile-tailed drow paladin with her twin ninja star-firing rapiers and pneumatic show armor, which has chase lights around the breastworks and self-oiling hips. Not this time. No, it’s about why Munchkin matters to me. And should, to you.

When we’re young, if we’re lucky, there’s time for fun in life. Time to play, time to daydream, time to dawdle, time to get muddy, to discover books . . . time for ourselves. As the years move along, rules creep in, and obligations, and the need to make bucks – and it all takes so much time. All those demands gobble up a lot of the hours in which we used to have fun. Worries proliferate, stakes become higher, stress and tension visit us a lot more often or even become constant companions, and life gets grayer. Boo hoo, happens to all of us, I know, and when my father and grandfather were young, they walked the proverbial uphill both ways to school and back, and had to work blahblahblah.

So let me speak of a friend of mine who came back from a war grayer than many. All grim, no smiles, stone-faced. All the fun drained – scorched – right out of him. Didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to go out and do things, certainly didn’t want to play games. Especially games about war. “War’s no game,” he snarled once, walking out on a roleplaying session that was just about to start.

So, of course, being gamers, we tricked him into a game.

He still knew how to drink, and there came a night and a bar where three guys with many bottles on their table were playing cards. They called him over and invited him to join in. He did, but instead of hearts and spades, the cards in the hand he was dealt had goofy art on them and even goofier names. He went even more stone-faced, snared a beer, and started to fold his hand. Which was when someone played a card that startled him into half-grinning and staying put. Not long after that, he was laughing out loud – and asking what the game was and when we could play it again.

So we gave him the cards and told him tomorrow night, at his place, and we’d bring the beer. He laughed again as he said, “Great!”

I don’t know if he’s played any other sorts of games since then, but he plays Munchkin whenever he can. And the stone face is gone. He’s not the type to use the word love, but I know he loves Munchkin.

And why not? You’ve got to love a game that has expansion sets entitled Beating a Dead Horse and Jump the Shark. Not to mention Cheat With Both Hands. And has cards called “Really Secret Agent” and “Rat on a Stick” and “Foof Gun.” (Not to mention monster enhancement cards called “. . . With Bagpipes” and “. . . With Extra Cheese” and “Better Costume Than Yours.”) Or a card that really is labeled “You’ll Take Away My Toy When You Pry It From My Cold, Dead Hands.”

I personally love watching the faces of highbrow non-gamer friends who are busily sneering at “this silly game” when cards entitled “Mephitic,” “Rugose,” and “Squamous” come up in play. Not to mention “Tumescent.” (No, kids, don’t play Munchkin in class. Cards with names like that get a game confiscated faster than you can draw breath. And for good. Teachers like to play games, too. And win.)

You’ve got to love a game – or at least I do – that allows characters to wear Three Years of Dirt and yet still have a character class of Playboy.

You’ve got to love a game that has a monster called the Floating Nose. And another called the Tongue Demon. Not to mention James Bomb, or Squidzilla, or the Worminator, or the Plutonium Dragon. And, of course, the legendary, make-the-most-valiant-hero-quakein-terror Gazebo!

And I, specifically, love the glee I feel when the Chicken on Your Head curse enters play. Except when it lands on my character’s head, of course. . . .

Yes, this is a supremely silly game that works. Along the way it celebrates not just gamer culture, but the larger culture that enwraps almost everyone alive in the Western world, no matter how they try to avoid, shun, or renounce it – often while secretly enjoying aspects of it as guilty pleasures.

Munchkin is a pleasure, all right. And it’s certainly “guilty,” in that all gamers are guilty of contributing to the things Steve Jackson reacted to, lampooned, and slyly included in this classic of a game.

If you love the game already, turn the page and waste not another second reading my ramblings.

If this is your introduction to Munchkin, turn the page and get on with it. Don’t worry. You’ll pick up the rules as you go along; it really is easy.

And if you’re just getting settled into Munchkin, you’ve come to the right place. Sit down, pick up your hand of goofy cards, and start laughing.

 

Ed Greenwood is an amiable, bearded Canadian writer, game designer, and librarian best known as the creator of the Forgotten Realms fantasy world. He sold his first fiction at age six, and over the almost five decades since, has published more than 200 books that have sold millions of copies worldwide in over two dozen languages. Ed writes fantasy, SF, horror, steampunk, and pulp adventure, in prose and in comic books, and has won several dozen writing and gaming awards, including multiple Origins Awards and ENnies. He was elected to the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame in 2003. He has judged the World Fantasy Awards and the Sunburst Awards, hosted radio shows, acted onstage, explored caves, jousted, and been Santa Claus (but not all on the same day). Ed shares an old Ontario farmhouse with his wife and the head of the household, a small but imperious cat. This ramshackle mansion sags under the weight of more than 80,000 books. Ed’s most recent novels include The Iron Assassin, a steampunk romp from Tor Books; Spellstorm, a Forgotten Realms book from Wizards of the Coast; and Hellmaw: Your World Is Doomed!, the first release from The Ed Greenwood Group.