Member House Rules

[TheRaven81]

IDK if this has already been said yet, but we have a house rule about Thieves: If a Thief is at Level 1, he cannot attempt to steal from anyone. Because if he fails, then he has nothing to lose besides the cards he discarded and didn't want anyways.

[az130]

We invented what we call Anti Munchkin.

You start at Level 10 with no class.
You start with 4 Doors and 4 Treasures just like normal Munchkin.
If you dont already have a class/race/accent etc and you can become one, you MUST become it.
At any time you have usable equipment in your hand or sideways on the table, you must immediately equip it. If its sideways on the table, you must activate it. This applies to Ships, Steeds, Vehicles, Hirelings etc.
Your aim is to get down to level 1 or 0 (we agreed to go down to 0, but normally it would be level 1.)
You are allowed to curse yourself and play cards on yourself such as wandering monster.
You need 2 x GUAL cards to play on someone to make them go UP A LEVEL.

Battle
Just like normal munchkin. When you draw a monster by kicking open a door, YOU MUST FIGHT IT. If you win, you go up levels. You go down levels and still roll to run away and see if you end up with bad stuff just like the normal game. We are still yet to figure how to change the help mechanics of the game.

Hand Limit
There is none. You may have as many cards as you want in your hand after playing all the cards that you must play.

Win Condition
Keep going until someone reaches level 1 or 0 as agreed.

Reply to this thread to add rules you think would make this better.

[MunchkinMaster]

Originally Posted by felwred

I've been co-running a weekly Munchkin game at my FLGS with 1-2 tables of 5-6 people each week for about a year. We moved to a variant of the standard tournament rules and found it both speeds up the game and enhances the value of charity.

Recommended Variant rules:
Standard tournament rules with peek at door and treasure for looting the room.

Get rid of "tapping" or backpack of cards that you can't use. This greatly reduces the amount of ammunition you can stockpile in front of you to stop people from winning (normally the 4th or 5th attempt results in a successful win.)

Most tournament rounds seem to end with the 2 hours going by and highest combat value determining the winner between the stack of people at 9th level. Wouldn't it be better to actually have clear winners each round?

Fred

Second variant is what my group also uses. Makes the game far more interesting, mainly because cards like Pollymorph potion, loaded die, wand of dowsing, etc. become unexpected twists to the game. More sneakiness = more fun. Also greatly increases how much charity you have to give, which makes the game move faster.

[beizend0rk]

Munchkin is a fantastic game of doing whatever it takes to get ahead. We've been experimenting with ways to keep the same spirit of the game, but in a way that it can be played co-operatively. Here are the house rules we have so far for this game variant.

__________________________________________________ _____________________________


Goal: As a group, acquire 10,000 gold.

All normal rules apply. Players take turns as normal, and proceed to kick down the door on their turn.

Keep in mind ahead of time that because some treasures or abilities have no purpose other than hurting your fellow players, they may have little value in this game variant except as fodder for the discard pile. This is balanced out by new rules requiring discards.


Setup

Divide door cards into:
- Monsters
- Monster Modifiers
- Curses
- Character development (everything else)

The Monster Modifiers deck should include all monster enhancement cards, and any cards that determine a monster's condition or behavior, such as: Dead, Mate, Out to lunch, Filthy Rich, Wandering Monster.

This should ensure that character development cards are the only type that may exist in a players hand. A player should never have a door card that would change a monster's behavior. It you end up with such a card, it should probably go into the modifier deck

Kick down the door

Because the door cards have been separated, roll 1d6 to determine which deck to use:

1. Monster + Modifer
2. Monster
3. Monster or Curse ( player choice )
4. Curse
5. Character Development
6. Treasure

- If no combat occurs on a 1-4 roll, players may still loot the room (from the character development deck), or look for trouble.

- When "looking for trouble" draw two monster cards and choose which one to fight. Then place the other monster back on top of the monster deck. (This builds anticipation for the next combat since players know what is coming, and there's nothing they can do about it.)


Gold rules

On a players turn, he/she may discard gold value items to contribute towards the goal pot.

- For every 1,000 in the gold pot, every new monster drawn has it's increases by 1. For example, if the pot has 5,000 and a level 10 monster is drawn, that monster's base level should be considered 15.

- Players may redeem items for levels as usual. When redeeming for levels, leftover gold is not applied to the goal pot.

- There is a level cap of 10. This is when players should consider contributing to the pot.

- The players win when the goal pot reaches 10,000.


Trading Rules

- GUAL cards can not be traded or applied to other players.

- Only treasure cards can be traded.

- You may only trade from your hand, not cards out in front of you. You may place cards out in front of you back in your hand at the beginning of your turn, respecting the hand limit. This is to prevent players from "passing around" items that would be considered equipped.


Combat Rules

- To help in combat, you or the player receiving help must discard one card.

- Elves can only receive the additional level for helping if either player discards an additional card.

- A thief may backstab a monster. It may also be useful for a thief to steal/borrow an item, as they can obtain it outside of the trading rules.

- Anytime a monster modifier is drawn, it is immediately applied to the most recently drawn monster.

- When Wandering Monster is drawn as a modifier, draw the next monster card and add it to the combat.

- When playing a one-shot item, roll 1d6 and apply the following:

1-3. Item applied according to card.
4. Item fails ( discard it with no effect)
5. Curse and item succeeds.
6. Curse and item fails.

If it falls on a curse, draw the top curse card and it is immediately applied to the player using the one-shot item.

Misc Rules

- If you have a card that allows you to rearrange the next door cards, you may choose which door deck to apply this to when playing it. If the card involves taking a door card in that action, you must draw from the character development deck, regardless of which deck was rearranged.

__________________________________________________ _____________________________

That's it! For now... I feel like it could still be polished out a bit more. I would like to add some way for the players to lose. Right now they can only lose through giving up. If things don't go well, they get to a point of exhaustion by running low on cards and the monsters becoming more powerful.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, comments, and experiences.

[Gloag]

Our house rule that we use is that we skip the charity phase because in the begining we read the rules wrong and once i did a re-read of the rules charity really sounds useless so we have never done it

[ThisisDog]

Yeah, we just discard instead of charity. Another rule is that if you have to lose a level at level 1, it counts as death, but that may or may not be a rule anyway, I haven't checked but everyone I've played against seems to think it is.

On a related note, I think Nutski the Squirrel might be banned soon after my brother in law was forced to fight him, Little Bunny 'Thulhu, The Kraken and Katrina in one go. I love that squirrel.

[Devin Lewis]

Charity is actually fairly important. It stops people from hoarding cards, and depending on what you pass along, can help the lower level players catch up.

Losing a level at level 1 means nothing happens, as you don't have a level to lose.

Of course, this being the house rules forum, you're more than welcome to continue to play your way.

[ThisisDog]

We still discard cards down to 5 cards in our hand at the end of each turn, to avoid hoarding like you said. It just keeps things simpler, me and the wife are virtual newcomers to the game, my sister and her partner who introduced us haven't played it much more than we have and we're teaching others too.

Another thing we do is have an accessory equipped in it's own slot, something like the spiked elbows that isn't an armour, headgear or footwear item and doesn't have a hand value, because we're not sure if they take up a hand or not. I'm sure it's simple but we've adopted this way and it works for us.

[Gloag]

Originally Posted by ThisisDog

We still discard cards down to 5 cards in our hand at the end of each turn, to avoid hoarding like you said. It just keeps things simpler, me and the wife are virtual newcomers to the game, my sister and her partner who introduced us haven't played it much more than we have and we're teaching others too.

Another thing we do is have an accessory equipped in it's own slot, something like the spiked elbows that isn't an armour, headgear or footwear item and doesn't have a hand value, because we're not sure if they take up a hand or not. I'm sure it's simple but we've adopted this way and it works for us.

Since spiked elbows do not say 1 Hand nor do they say 2 Hands, they do not take up any hands. And whan you think about it, spiked elbows or say really impressive title wouldn't take up any hands if you were physically using them so it makes sense that these items don't take up any hands. (Because of this, you can have as many no-hands items as you want equipped at one time.

[ThisisDog]

I've been toying with ideas to streamline and simplify a massive Blender set, the type I hope to own someday, by consolidating different types of cards that you'd have in play, stopping the table being covered in unmanageable amounts of cards;

Races, Loyalties and Mojos are the same, and thus Half Breed, Double Agent, Double Mojo etc are the same too. I'd wondered about creating a 'Zombie' race card that is required to use a Mojo, but decided against it. Instead, the player becomes a Zombie if they play a Mojo.

Powers, Styles, Trainings, Factions, Birthrights and Accents are the same, and thus Bilingual and Double Life are the same too. I know the official rules state explicitly that Birthrights and Factions are different, but I can't see any reason why they can't be if I choose them to be.

Classes remain Classes alone, but Hipster is now a class.

Hirelings and all their many names are the same thing as usual, as are Steeds and Vehicles. Ships have their own category, instead of being items. The player may have one Hireling, one Steed and one Ship, but more with Cheat! of course.

Items and Origins are the same, and the player may have as many as they want.

Also, I've noticed a lot of the hate directed at Munchkin comes with the finality of it, and that once someone gets to level 9, the game just becomes all about preventing their win. So I've come up with Endless Munchkin, ignoring the epic rules, instead when a player reaches level 11, they become legendary. All Monsters fought thereon have double their total attack score (including bonuses), and the legendary Munchkin's fame allows them to hire an extra Hireling. At level 21, the enemies triple in power and 3 Hirelings can be equipped etc. The game just ends when people want it to.

Gonna trial these rules once I get some more core sets. If there's any reason why this won't work I'd love to hear it, as long as it's constructive.