Munchkin, Board Games, and a Geeky Tween

Disclaimer: I'm not a parent. However, I got to help my housemate, Bran, teach his daughter how to play Munchkin! It was, predictably, adorable. Quick backstory: Every other weekend, Bran has custody of his kid. She's too young for the surly teenager phase, but old enough to start being geeky, which makes her incredibly fun.

I got to show her Star Wars; she got me hooked on Phineas and Ferb. I'm showing her My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic; she got me to watch Percy Jackson. Also, I may have addicted her to Rock Band as a method of outsourcing the instruments that I'm less adept at, like drums.

Lately, she has been on a serious board game kick. Not surprising since the kid is a fiend for chess, but board gaming opens up a whole new subset of geekiness. We're still building our boardgame collection, so there's no Settlers or Carcassonne... yet.

A small board game collection

compared to a lot of geeks.

We've been playing a lot of Clue and Life. It's gotten to the point where I've played enough Clue to start using Carmac the Magnificent tricks to ascertain whodunit. To widen the gaming selection, Bran snagged a few alternatives for her birthday, including Munchkin.

From a educational standpoint: the game involves a little addition and kids can work on reading comprehension with the flavor text depending on how old they are, same as with most card games. However, we weren't playing it to try and predict her SOL scores. We were playing it because Munchkin is awesome.

For the past few weeks, we've been trying to interest her in Munchkin. It's been kind of a hard sell because there aren't ads for it on Disney, and you can't peel Munchkin cards off your McDonald's combo meal. Wary of the unknown, she's been showing polite caution rather than diving in. Finally, we went ahead and decided to play. Bran started reading the instructions and letting her look through the deck.

She became completely entranced by Kovalic's art as she scanned the cards. Her attention snapped back when the instructions mentioned the Wannabe Vampire. Fascinated, the next ten minutes involved a thorough search for that exact card. As far as I know, she's not a vampire fan, but something about the name absolutely thrilled her.

The kid's a natural storyteller, transforming even the most simplistic games into complex narratives. By the end of a game of Life, every character has a fully fleshed-out biography. It was the same with the Wannabe Vampire. She spent the rest of the day warning everyone that even if you try to escape, he WILL corner you and talk about his character for three hours. A complicated backstory was constructed, justifying the faux vampire's strange abilities.

I'm always impressed with the imagination that she pours into every game. It reminds me of when I started playing RPGs in college. A lot of gaming geeks hit the point where you realize that you've developed an emotional attachment to that sheet of graph paper or that cluster of pixels. It's been fun watching someone else reach that point. Between bullies and church, I wasn't allowed to be geeky as a kid; there's something vicariously satisfying watching the girl grow up in a geek-friendly environment.

A bit of common sense that's worth mentioning: a ten-year-old isn't going to get the inside jokes like "Why do I have to fight the Gazebo alone?" But there's plenty in the game that they will appreciate. For example, the Rat on a Stick was declared adorable, and used as the sole weapon of choice until she was hit by a curse at level 7 that caused her to drop it. The excitement over the cute dead rat was surpassed only by the glee at getting to kick down a door with each turn.

Behold the Rat on a Stick! (Munchkin © John Kovalic and Steve Jackson Games) 

We did wind up playing the first game with cards face up, which made everything go more smoothly than just a one-round tutorial would have. I assume that it would be easier for kids who are already into games like Magic: the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, and ... Pokemon? Do kids still play Pokemon?

A quick search tells me that, yes, people still do play Pokemon. Let me do a quick set of plugs for local DC-area events: Eagle and Empire in Alexandria has a league, as do Outpost Games in Gainesville and Hobby Works in Fairfax.

On top of that, Ultrazone Laser Tag has a Friday night Yu-Gi-Oh tournament. For DC Magic players, Labyrinth Games & Puzzles has Friday Night Magic (along with a half dozen others in the area). Well, damn. Now I wish I had stuck with M:tG instead of building one red/blue Scourge deck, then giving up.

Anyway, as a non-parent, I don't anticipate putting up many posts of "Look! A kid doing geek things!" but posts like this may pop up from time to time. Maybe it's proof of how I'm getting older, but I find less escapism in hours of gaming and more through indulging in a bit of nostalgia here and there with the geekling. After a week of bad news and being a Responsible Adult, it's nice to look at the next generation of geek and realize everything is probably going to be ok.