Member House Rules

[luiscurse]

As an avid player of Two Player Munchkin matches (my group even has a title for one on one singles matches) I can say that with the normal rules some sets on their own are really great (Booty and Impossible) Other sets may vary at times (Regular, Cthulhu and Zombies), and finally some are just horribly one sided and not meant for two player games (Super)

[Rezna]

anyone have house rules on the Super Munchikin powers that give the theft ability. me and my friends made some house rules but every time we argue back and forth here are some problems we encounter and some things we have said

Problems:

-ability to use over and over in a turn and attempt to steal all all really critical items and it becomes very unfair
-stealing is too easy
not as much of a penalty for the amount of power it gives the player.

House Rules So Far:

-steal once per turn
-the person being the target of theft can either discard a card to redirect the theft to another card the targeted player or lose a level to roll and try to negate it all together


newer rule due to the fact that stealing is way to powerful and broke the gameplay

-cant use the theft ability and theft powers are one less rank


im looking to see if anyone has any rules that balance this card for all or any suggestions that may help. it truly is a card that ruins game play

[drgflyy]

So, aside from customizing my decks a bit (removing all of the GUALs and most of the plus usable-only-once cards), here are a couple of house rules that we have adopted over the past three years of playing:

1) When going to Epic, your levels no longer count for your combat bonus.

2) You can only have 2 sides-ways cards on the table to indicate what is in your "back pack"

and our newest way of playing:

3) Double Jeopardy Munchkin:
When playing with 5 or more people, we choose two distinct genres of Munchkin cards, and keep the separate. Each player gets a character from each of the two genres. We then play both genres as separate games, starting one on one side of the board, and one on the other; with concept that they will keep going around the board without catching up to each other (even though they sometimes do).

I know this sounds complicated, but it is actually quite a lot of fun. The two genres never meet, so, for example, your Classic Munchkin character cannot put a curse on someone else's Space Munchkin character, nor could they help them if they wanted to. What this style does do is makes the game move at a frantic pace, with barely enough time to see what anyone else is doing (so leaving lots of room for cheating), and always keeps you occupied, as it is either your turn, your other turn or you're trying to get someone else. We played this way with nine people the other day and it was a hoot!

Another great benefit to Double Jeopardy Munchkin is that you end up with two winners! So if you're doing really bad in one genre, you may be doing a lot better in the other. I know that's not very Munchkinly, but maybe we could have them battle to the death for an ultimate winner after the two champions trounce everyone else.

[TheLord]

Originally Posted by drgflyy

So, aside from customizing my decks a bit (removing all of the GUALs and most of the plus usable-only-once cards), here are a couple of house rules that we have adopted over the past three years of playing:

1) When going to Epic, your levels no longer count for your combat bonus.

2) You can only have 2 sides-ways cards on the table to indicate what is in your "back pack"

and our newest way of playing:

3) Double Jeopardy Munchkin:
When playing with 5 or more people, we choose two distinct genres of Munchkin cards, and keep the separate. Each player gets a character from each of the two genres. We then play both genres as separate games, starting one on one side of the board, and one on the other; with concept that they will keep going around the board without catching up to each other (even though they sometimes do).

I know this sounds complicated, but it is actually quite a lot of fun. The two genres never meet, so, for example, your Classic Munchkin character cannot put a curse on someone else's Space Munchkin character, nor could they help them if they wanted to. What this style does do is makes the game move at a frantic pace, with barely enough time to see what anyone else is doing (so leaving lots of room for cheating), and always keeps you occupied, as it is either your turn, your other turn or you're trying to get someone else. We played this way with nine people the other day and it was a hoot!

Another great benefit to Double Jeopardy Munchkin is that you end up with two winners! So if you're doing really bad in one genre, you may be doing a lot better in the other. I know that's not very Munchkinly, but maybe we could have them battle to the death for an ultimate winner after the two champions trounce everyone else.

Double jeapordy sounds like it would work, but I would recommend one thing.

1. You might want three games going. I personally have three sets, and with nine people, it dosn't sound absurd. Maybe use something to mark which turn you were on. I personally would be constantly takeing turns with one character when i should the other. If the guy next to me handed me a red poker chip indicating it was a Munchkin Bites turn, and a blue one for Vanilla Munchkin I might keep it a little more straight.

[goodbunny2000]

We play one House Rule in ALL sets.

A WANDERING MONSTER card can be played without a Monster, and the first Monster card played on it, by any player(including the player who's fight it was played on,) becomes the Wandering Monster.

I find this prevents people from discarding Wandering Monster cards and makes it much less useless to have a bunch of Wandering Monster cards in your hand and no Monsters.

Also it's fun to quickly play a level 1 Monster on a Wandering Monster Card that's played on you, while all the other players are busy arguing over what Monster to throw on it.


In Munchkin Cthulhu we have two House rules.

In a 3 or 4 player game, when everyone becomes a Cultist, everyone rolls off and low roller dies (a loaded die IS legal to play on this roll.) Then everyone has the option to immediately stop being a Cultist.
This rule prevents the game from ending on the first couple turns.

We also play that in addition to "Goth" Monsters being able to stack on each other, any Monster that ends in "oth" can stack too.


In addition to these, our deck has about four dozen homemade cards (so far,) including extra races and classes, which I can't link to or discuss in anyway, as per the rules of this forum *sigh*

[SmokeRulz]

Originally Posted by Rezna

im looking to see if anyone has any rules that balance this card for all or any suggestions that may help. it truly is a card that ruins game play

I disagree with that. Theft can be a very powerful tool, but you're still being forced to discard a card to use the ability, with only a 50/50 shot at succeeding, and if you fail, you lose a level on top of the card you discarded. The risks are fair when you consider the reward of stealing one SMALL item. You can steal as much as you want in a turn, but you risk losing several levels, on top of all the cards you're discarding that could have been useful later on. In addition to all that, most players despise the Thief because of the theft ability, so by being a Thief and busing the power, you run the risk of the entire table picking on you mercilessly. It's the Munchkin way. The only thing "wrong" with theft is that you can do it a Level 1 without risking level loss, but you're still losing a card anyway to power it.

If it's really that much of a problem for your game group, invoke the rule of "You can only steal once per turn" and perhaps "You cannot steal if you are Level 1."

[Ranadiel]

I've recently had a thought for a new house rule, but I need to work out the specifics. The basic idea is to add 1 or 2 additional decks to the game. These would be "promo" decks that consisted solely of promo or "bonus" cards(like those that come with jumbo d6s). Potentially boosters could be put into the deck also, but that might dilute it a bit too much.

I'm not sure how to decide whether you draw from the deck though. I've been thinking having it so that you may roll a d6 when drawing from either deck and if you get a 6 you may draw one card from the appropriate bonus deck. If you are playing with fellow Munchkin collectors then everyone could have their own promo decks if you don't mind sorting them out after the game.

[goodbunny2000]

Here's an interesting rule for a certain type of Race card that I made(I'll try not to mention what this tiny race is or what it's abilities are. )

This Race,(in addition to being able to be played as a regular race card,) if given a name, can be played as a second character, totally separate from your original character, with all the attributes available to a regular character (level, class, items, etc.) except they can't ride steeds or have Hirelings and can't stop being this race. They share your turn and your hand. You can only play two characters at a time, not even a cheat card will allow you to control three characters.

These characters don't kick down doors, but you can choose to look for trouble for them instead of yourself and if you sell stuff, you can give the level to the character (your carried items are kept separate but obviously its easy to trade with yourself.) They start at level 1, get a level every time they help you beat a monster (but not vice-verse, unless you're an Elf,) and they CAN win the game. If that character wins, it's NOT considered a Win for the Player who played it, and if they help you win at any level, it's considered a tie.

This character can help other players (maybe they have to as a limitation/ability of that Race,) but they must run away just as any other player would and they can suffer bad stuff and curses.

If this character dies it does NOT come back, and if anything forces it to stop being the race in question, everyone else rolls off and high roller takes control of the character and all items it was carrying. If you die and your extra character lives, your extra character can loot your body and you can still come back normally.

You can't discard a Race Card you've named, but you can relinquish control of them to another player. I think that's most of the rules for them.

In theory, you could play this rule for any race (Halfling would work well,) but I would include a NO BIG ITEM rule, (which is possibly a regular Race restriction for this mystery race.)

That might sound kind of confusing without knowing what the race I created is or it's abilities, but it's a pretty fun to play an extra character who helps you but ultimately can and, will likely, screw you over.

If you want to know what the race is and its abilities, just PM for a link to my custom cards.

[Brugist]

What we do, is when a Wandering Monster card is played, everybody who has a monster in their hand can play it. If nobody plays any monsters, the deck is searched until three are found, then reshuffled. All characters must now assist in these kills (and we've had situations where three are found, and then more people tossed more out) and the loot/levels are divided evenly with the player of the Wandering Monster card having the greater share (we turn em all facedown and shuffle them out). This makes for very fast/interesting games.

[TheBiff]

I only have one house rule, and it is only because I mix decks. The decks I mix are Munchkin Booty and Munchkin Cthulhu and so Cultist class cards rarely come up. So because of this we start out with two of the Cultist class cards discarded.