History TabletopGame / Munchkin

** Not to mention [[IncrediblyLamePun Deus Ex Machinegun]].

* IncrediblyLamePun: Most of the cards. Most notably "The Punster" from ''Super Munchkin'', who's stated as being "just a card. Ha ha. '''Kill him right now.'''"

* RunningGag: There's a variant on "Everyone starts as a level 1 human with [[IncrediblyLamePun no class]]" in the game set-up portion of every version's rules. Later editions started lampshading the hell out of this.

* InfantImmortality: In Munchkin Apocalypse, Kids replace a "Death" result with "Lose a level".

''Admit it. You love it.''

Asmodee Digital released a dungeon crawling PartyGame ''VideoGame/MunchkinQuackedQuest'' in November, 2019.

* AnAdventurerIsYou: You are an adventurer going on a dungeon crawl. You begin the game as a human with [[RunningGag no class]], but can gain other races and classes later (multiple ones, if you have the right cards). The base races are [[HumansAreAverage Human]], [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame Dwarf]], [[OurElvesAreBetter Elf]], and Halfling. The base Classes are [[BadassPreacher Cleric]], [[FighterMageThief Fighter, Wizard, and Thief]]. The expansions and spin-offs add more.

** The original had [[HumansAreAverage humans]] (the standard-race for every player), [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame dwarfs]], [[OurElvesAreBetter elves]] and [[Main/{{Hobbits}} halflings]]

* OurElvesAreBetter: These ones get a bonus to running away from combat and can gain levels from assisting others.

** While most of ''Munchkin Zombie'' has art by Creator/JohnKovalic, the card "Meals on Wheels" is done by a different artist. Kovalic [[http://www.dorktower.com/2016/05/16/the-munchkin-card-i-couldnt-draw/ refused to do the card]] as he had recently become a father.[[note]]If you still don't get it: The card depicts a pair of baby carriages, with a hungry zombie nearby.[[/note]]

** ''Epic Munchkin'' Alternate rules that increase the level cap to twenty.

** And all of those races can be combined with the [[HalfHumanHybrid Half Breed card]], so a character can easily be half-dwarf, half-cyborg or half-Cimmerian, half-Faun.* MicroMonarchy: Parodied on the "Ruler of A Small European Country" card, which shows the character standing in a "country" about one foot square.

** A version based on ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' was released in 2017.

* ThemedStockBoardGame: There are a number of licensed versions of ''Munchkin'' featuring properties such as ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'', and ''ComicBook/XMen''.

* SheIsTheKing: "[[EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses Princess]]" is an available role in Grimm Tidings, which can be taken by male players, but ''doesn't'' actually change your in-game sex.

Asmodee Digital released a dungeon crawling VideoGame ''VideoGame/MunchkinQuackedQuest'' in November, 2019.

Creator/{{CMON}} funded a separate tabletop game called ''Munchkin Dungeon'' through Website/{{Kickstarter}}.

You are in a dungeon. Also present in this dungeon are monsters and treasure. You have been sent on a holy quest[[note]]Well, holy if you’re a cleric, maybe. Which you may be some of the time.[[/note]] to kill the monsters and steal the treasure. Unfortunately, everyone else in your party is trying to do the same thing.

''[[http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/ Munchkin]]'' is a card game series by Creator/SteveJacksonGames. The fundamental rules are simple and easy to learn, but the text on the cards regularly changes the rules. If you keep a sharp eye on what the rules say at this very moment, you will uncover situations where your half-Elf half-Halfling Warrior Cleric can wield four weapons at once, send any monster he fights over to another player instead, and get the treasure from it anyway.

CMON Limited funded a seperate tabletop game called ''Munchkin Dungeon'' through Website/{{Kickstarter}}.

* ThreatheningShark: ''Munchkin Booty'' has sharks. Whenever any combat includes a shark, anyone else can add another shark without a wandering monster card. ''Star Munchkin'' also has the [[PunnyName Star fish]].

* BalefulPolymorph:
** The Pollymorph potion turns your opponent into a parrot. Nice when a "friend" sends a plutonium dragon after you.
** However, this allows the pollymorphed monster to fly away, denying you the chance of killing it, and thus of gaining a level.

* BribingYourWayToVictory: For instance, The ''Wicked'' (a Variant of the standard munchkin die) Dice, which are actually used to track your CharacterLevel and not to generate a random number, come with instructions that say the holder of a die starts the game with a +1 CharacterLevel bonus.
** There are also level-up cards which notionally involve bribing the GM.
*** Notably "Bribe the GM with Food", a common sight in both this and other {{Role Playing Game}}s.

* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Half the fun of the game boils down to this. There's a reason the tagline's third part reads "Stab Your Buddy". A fair chunk of the cards serve no purpose except to screw with other players.
** Cards that give one-time bonuses to combat are common. Cards that let you ''choose'' which side to give bonuses to are rare. Help or hinder, the choice is yours.

* DeaderThanDead: Cards that remove other cards or enemies from the game entirely (often in hilarious ways) are par for the course in any expansion or version.

* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: A player who dies keeps his Class, Race, and Level, instead only losing all of his other cards. He revives at the start of his next turn and even gets a new starting hand of eight cards.
** However, depending on how the game is going, this can be a variation on ContinuingIsPainful: levels can pale in comparison to item bonuses. If you have 9 levels, but +25 from items (and also an item that renders you immune to any and all curses, reflecting them on the rest of the party instead), death is severely crippling.
* DeusExMachina: The Divine Intervention card.

** Made even more humorous when the outcome of the battles inevitably rely on which player has the best one-shot items.

* DungeonCrawling: There's no actual dungeon map, but the game assumes that you're in one.
** For a similar game with a dungeon map, there's the spinoff MunchkinQuest.

* EverythingsBetterWithSamurai: ''Munchkin Fu''
** BearsAreBadNews - the Over Bear and Evil Ted
** OurDragonsAreDifferent: Munchkin Dragons features several. The original, of course, is the Plutonium Dragon, a parody of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'''s Platinum Dragon, Bahamut.
** EverythingsEvenWorseWithSharks - ''Munchkin Booty'' has sharks. Whenever any combat includes a shark, anyone else can add another shark without a wandering monster card. ''Star Munchkin'' also has the [[PunnyName Star]][[IncrediblyLamePun fish]].
** EverythingsDeaderWithZombies - ''Munchkin Zombies'' is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.
* EvilLawyerJoke: Lawyers won't attack Thieves because of professional courtesy. Also, they count as sharks.

* ExactWords: Let's put it this way: This game had to have errata added to clarify that, yes, the bad stuff 'you are roasted and eaten' means 'you are dead'. The game's played by {{Munchkin}}s, what else do you think they're going to do about rules they don't like?

* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The Cheat card. And the Level-Up card. And the Curse/Trap card. And.. well... you get the point.
** In short, every card in the entire game does exactly what it says on the tin. This is even stated in the rules. And if a card would break the rules or some rules set by another card, the new card overwrites those! A lot of those cards, though, come with the added benefit of being incredibly vague, which leads to some less than intended uses for certain cards (such as forcing another player to go up a level during combat to prevent them from escaping from a powerful enemy that'll have them for breakfast).
* FateWorseThanDeath: since DeathIsCheap, replacing the dead's hand and items with eight random new cards, a fair few monsters have Bad Stuff even worse. King Tut forces the discard of everything without the replenishing hand, and the Wight Brothers reduce the player's level to 1.

* FungusHumongous: What you get if you play the "Humongous" card on the "Fungus" monster. "Don't truffle with the Humongous Fungus!"
** To elaborate, the "Humongous" card increases a monster's level by 10. The fungus is a Level 5 Monster that states that, should it become humongous, gains 25 levels instead of 10. "Do not truffle" indeed.

* GenderBender: The "Change Sex" traps. There's also a "[[FreudianSlip Freudian Slipper]]" that lets you alternate between genders, but if you lose it and you're stuck with the wrong gender, then you're at a disadvantage.

* HouseRules: Inevitable, considering that "Argue about the rules" is actually in the rules.
** It is also stated in the rules that if any player, at any time, has any questions or disagrees regarding the rules, the game stops until everyone has come to an agreement. The DM, AKA the one who owns the cards, has the final word in any discussion.

* InfinityPlusOneSword: Most notable in ''Star Munchkin'', where you can stack up anything with its name ending with '-aser'. This can lead to a plus-''24'' [[CoolGun Laser-Dazer-Raser-Maser-Schmaser-Bobaser-Bananafanafofaser-Laser]][[note]]Wot, no Memymomaser?[[/note]] if you're lucky. This is strong enough to beat everything.

** It is, however, possible to obtain the "Antimatter" trap, either via the initial draw or Looting The Room, and then to use said trap to turn someone's stacked-laser weapon into an un-droppable [[InvertedTrope Negative Infinity Minus One Sword]]. (The combined laser [[CripplingOverSpecialization counts as a single two-handed "complex" item]], so it works.) The unfortunate person/Munchkin on the receiving end is [[FateWorseThanDeath pretty much crippled as a result]].
** Just read the rules for Star Munchkin and they explicitly state that the combined laser can be dismantled at any time to prevent this from happening, so they apparently already thought of that.
*** Of course, if you added the before-mentioned enhancers, such as "...of Doom", to the combined weapon, then a good case could be made that they were all on the part that just got hit with the Antimatter unless you took the extra time to explicitly state otherwise.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfRaces / MassiveRaceSelection: Munchkin has loads of races by now, due to its many expansions and editions which can all be combined:
** The original had [[HumansAreAverage humans]] (the standard-race for every player), [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame dwarfs]], [[OurElvesAreBetter elves]] and [[Main/{{Hobbits}} halflings]]
** The expansion packs gave [[OurOrcsAreDifferent orcs]], [[LizardFolk lizard guys]], [[OurCentaursAreDifferent centaurs]] and [[OurGnomesAreWeirder gnomes]].
** Munchkin Bites added [[ChangelingTale changelings]], [[FurAgainstFang vampires, werewolves]] and, with the Pants Macabre expansion, [[Main/{{Mummy}} mummies]]
** Munchkin [[Franchise/ConanTheBarbarian Conan]] added Cimmerians, Stygians, Kushite and Zamorians
** Munchkin Legends had the standard dwarves, elves and halflings and added [[FaunsAndSatyrs fauns]]
** [[RecycledInSpace Star Munchkin]] added [[Main/{{Cyborg}} cyborgs]], [[CatFolk felines]], [[Main/{{Mutants}} mutants]] and, with the ''The Clown Wars'' expansion, [[LittleGreenMen bugs]]
** And all of those races can be combined with the [[HalfHumanHybrid Half Breed card]], so a character can easily be half-dwarf, half-cyborg or half-Cimmerian, half-Faun.

* MassiveRaceSelection: See LoadsAndLoadsOfRaces
* MicroMonarchy: Parodied on the "Ruler of A Small European Country" card, which shows the character standing in a "country" about one foot square.

* [[NamesToRunAwayFrom/NamesEndingInTh NamesToRunAwayFrom: NamesEndingInTh]]. If a player fight's against a monster whose name ends with -goth, other players can add their -goth monsters to the fight. This has [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant nothing to do with]] the {{Goth}} culture but is derived from H.P. Lovecrafts [[BlobMonster shoggoths]].

** OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: They have a bonus to carrying capacity.
** OurElvesAreBetter: These ones get a bonus to running away from combat and can gain levels from assisting others.
* PermanentlyMissableContent:
** THE COOOOOOKIEEEEEE..., a special Munchkin cookie which cannot be re-purchased and must ''actually'' be eaten for its bonus to apply.
** Several of the promotional bookmarks have to be destroyed to activate their special power.

* PrehensileTail: ''Star Munchkin's'' [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Tailgun]], only usable by Felines, depicts one such Feline curling up a fairly normal-looking gun in one.

* ScaledUp: Munchkin Conan has the monster modifier "...That Turns Into A Giant Snake." It can actually be played on a monster that's already a giant snake, because it turns into a ''different'' giant snake.

* TorpedoTits

* DistractedByTheSexy: The picture for Cleavage Stun. Actually, the whole point of Cleavage Stun.

** StupidSacrifice: Whose 'special ability' is to sacrifice himself even if you're winning.

* StrongerWithAge: The "Ancient" monster buff card.

* UnderwearOfPower: A card in ''Super Munchkin''.

Creator/SteveJacksonGames also published three RPG books based on the core game and one based on ''Star Munchkin'' using TabletopGame/D20System. A supplement based on the game was also published for ''TabletopGame/{{Toon}}''.

''[[http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/ Munchkin]]'' is a card game series by Creator/SteveJacksonGames. The fundamental rules are simple and easy to learn, but the text on the cards regularly changes the rules. If you keep a sharp eye on what the rules say at this very moment, you will uncover situations where your half-Elf half-Halfling Barbarian Cleric can wield four weapons at once, send any monster he fights over to another player instead, and get the treasure from it anyway.

%%* AnAdventurerIsYou

** OurDragonsAreDifferent: Munchkin Dragons features several.

* FighterMageThief